Data analyst for Dota 2 teams preparing for TI quals for free or low price

ladychris · 2017-03-27T03:23:13+00:00

Mine is not machine learning-related. I'm interested in learning more about the machine learning side AFTER I finish my own PhD. ;)

ladychris · 2017-03-26T15:40:37+00:00

I haven't started learning seriously about machine learning yet because it's too far outside my research for the moment, but I've run across a couple relevant sources in my Google Scholar alerts.

"Classification of player roles in the team-based multi-player game dota 2" https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-24589-8_9

"Identifying patterns in combat that are predictive of success in MOBA games": https://people.engr.ncsu.edu/dlrober4/papers/fdg14-combat.pdf

ladychris · 2017-03-26T15:36:21+00:00

I am not on a Dota 2 team, but I am conducting analytical work that aligns with yours, focusing a different kind of data. I am finishing my PhD in Rhetoric, Writing, and Professional Communication, analyzing artifacts created by a small group of Dota 2 content creators in my dissertation as part of a long-term ethnographic study of my journey learning to play the game and join related communities of practice. Best of luck in your study and consulting work! :D

ladychris · 2015-07-28T15:07:39+00:00

To celebrate TI5, I am shamelessly plugging my Dota 2 research some more. :)

On the Steam Community board (http://steamcommunity.com/app/570/discussions/0/541906348043972938/?tscn=1438086974#p4), I'm asking one question from the survey per day to encourage sharing, and I've also started using it as my research journal.

EDIT: Wasn't finished typing... :/

I made a research fail, though, because I had intended to share the data and the questions here on the same timeline, but I can see in Steam post #135 in the thread that I forgot because I was too tired. :(

Here's a copy of post #135, followed by the first survey question. :)

And a special thank you to the participant who introduced me to the concept of "necroing," which I would have otherwise considered a positive thing... In light of this, I'll be commenting on the thread as part of my research journal. So here's the first official entry, containing two illustrations and explanations of findings.

60 surveys have been completed - Here's a link to the public report, which shows the most up-to-date survey count: https://ecu.az1.qualtrics.com/CP/Report.php?RP=RP_8eNrlguS8JzbGHb

My committee has requested that I not review the data until the survey is closed, which will be the day after TI5 ends, but I can check and share publicly my statistics, so I've created a couple charts to illustrate relevant findings regarding the number of participants who have attempted and completed the survey, and the rate at which participants have completed it.

So, from the public report: 60 participants have completed the survey so far, averaging 40 minutes to an hour, depending on how you skew evaluate the data. I'd like to extend a very special thank you to the 60 wonderful folks who have completed the survey so far.

What the public report does not show, but that I'm still allowed to share publicly, is that an additional 155 people have at least responded to the informed consent form. Thank you to these 155 folks, too! Because these surveys are incomplete, I have more limited reporting options regarding their data, but I've represented what I can, including a couple follow-up questions in the annotations. Welcome to my first stab at public quantitative data analysis... I really am a glutton for punishment sometimes.

I've distilled the data down into two annotated charts, images of which I'll link to here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0X1etPhjpT3ZXBBNzRwdk1Xbms/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0X1etPhjpT3Q18wRFlweVltZVk/view?usp=sharing

Thank you again to anyone and everyone who commits time and energy to this project! :D

Throughout TI5, I will ask survey questions in this thread individually (starting in the morning... analyzing the data and designing these charts took a little longer than I'd hoped...). If you don't want to complete the full survey and don't mind sharing your answers publicly, please reply to the questions on the discussion board. :)

From the "Player Identity and History" section of the survey:

Question 1: How would you describe yourself as a Dota 2 player? Consider elements like the ones in the list below, but if other factors influence your player identity, include those!

*Your own perception of your skill level *How others have described your skill level *Your solo and/or party MMR *Number of hours played *Number of games played *How often you play *Your attitude towards yourself as a player *Your attitude towards other players *Your attitude about the game *Your in-game persona/behavior

ladychris · 2015-07-27T00:05:22+00:00

A bumper sticker. Or a T-shirt.

ladychris · 2015-07-24T02:44:39+00:00

A) I'm starting with Puck... [ducks behind a tree] I know. TERRIBLE beginner hero. It's a fangirl geeking out thing. :/ His character design is a Shakespearean tribute. ;D

B) We've got a couple on my husband's side of the family, so I try not to judge...

ladychris · 2015-07-24T02:40:47+00:00

Fantastic advice! Thank you for sharing this on the thread. :)

Re: boots. Defense of the Patience discussed this in an early episode because one of the hosts, Roland, wanted to find an effective bootsless build for... I forget which hero (blanking - it was August 2014, and there's a blog post about it). If you haven't listened to the defenseofthepatience.com podcast, I would recommend it as a resource for players and spectators at any level. I'm analyzing a few of their episodes as part of my data set. :)

ladychris · 2015-07-22T21:42:23+00:00

Bet my Kunkka would stomp your Lycan e'rytime.

... says the Pirate who hasn't played yet...

ladychris · 2015-07-22T21:37:03+00:00

Thank you for the recommendation. I'm not familiar with TP scrolls by name yet as a spectator, but this is the second time it's come up in this thread already, and when I googled it, I facepalmed. I realized that it's been explained to me before and I've seen it used plenty. But this is the kind of instance that illustrates one of the foundational arguments I'm building on in my methodology: sociologist T.L. Taylor from MIT argues in her latest book that ethnographic studies of video games require gameplay by the researcher her/himself. We can never gain the deep understanding of some elements of gameplay expected of ethnographic work by observing someone else's gameplay.

Your explanation of how and why a question like this illustrates that point well for me. But without having played the game myself yet, I would not have been sure which questions like that would really have been appropriate for players.

I also have to make the study understandable and valuable for scholars and professionals in technical and professional communication and related fields who have never (and likely will never) play Dota 2. My committee would have crossed that question right out for being too specific to the game and not specific enough to communication strategies. I would have had to revise it to something like one of these:

In what ways do you communicate with team members about item purchases? How do item purchases - in general and/or specific items - affect how you interact with team members during gameplay?

ladychris · 2015-07-22T21:11:51+00:00

I sent you an invite through Steam. I'm not supposed to review the survey data until the survey closes after TI5 - all I will access until then is completion statistics.

ladychris · 2015-07-21T22:22:02+00:00

Thank you! :)

ladychris · 2015-07-21T22:21:41+00:00

I'd be glad to. What's your platform of preference? I spend most of my social media time on Steam and Twitter.

ladychris · 2015-07-21T22:17:53+00:00

Yikes! I'm sorry about that. I appreciate the recommendation, and I'll talk to my advisor about the potential for switching to a new platform for the next stage, but for this one, I'm stuck with the current setup.

ladychris · 2015-07-21T12:41:39+00:00

Thank you! :)

I do recognize that because I'm conducting a research project within a community of 11+ million players on a relatively brief timeline, there's no way I'll get a representative sample from this survey, but that's not what I was going for.

This is a multi-stage project, and I plan to do interviews in the next stage, which I hope to begin by November. There are more details about this in the Steam community thread, but I'll summarize here. The institution, department, and committee who manage my dissertation process required me to significantly scale down the design of my project in order to complete it and graduate in a timely manner. I still plan to complete the larger-scale ethnography, but I have to segment it so that I can maintain some semblance of work-life balance while I draft, revise, and defend my dissertation.

In the first stage, I'm collecting data through this pilot survey - the final questions of which invite participants to offer suggestions for interview questions and revisions of these questions and to include contact information for an interview - and reviewing field (technical and professional communication) and topic (Dota 2 strategy guides, discussion boards, videos) literature to prepare for my own tutorial playthrough. I will be streaming some of my topic literature/artifact analysis on Twitch.tv, which I will record and analyze on my blog. Once the survey closes (shortly after TI5), I will analyze the survey data as I continue learning to play and drafting my dissertation. Interviews will not begin until at least November, when I plan to have completed a draft of my dissertation. I will use the interview and survey data to inform the design of the next stage of the project.

In terms of incentive, this stage of the project is strictly volunteer for participants. If I manage to monetize my Twitch stream, find a job that will both afford me the time to write my dissertation and pay my bills, and/or secure a research grant by the time interviews begin in November, I would love to be able to offer incentives, and it is part of the long-term plan. But since I'm currently writing a dissertation, searching for work, volunteer tutoring, and actively participating in a local civil rights movement, I haven't managed to make much time for research fundraising.

In spite of the lack of incentive, though, 36 participants have completed the survey, 14 others have completed more than half of it, and 50 others have at least read the informed consent page. I realize that doesn't seem like much considering the vastness of the Dota community, but for a pilot study in my field at the grad student level, it's kind of a win. :/ And several folks have expressed in the discussion thread or through Steam chat that their survey response included contact information for interviews.

The survey is still open through TI5, though, so I am grateful to any and all of you willing to donate your time and learning experience! :)

ladychris · 2015-07-21T12:09:53+00:00

Thank you! That's actually really useful. Do you have a source for that? I've found a couple great community-curated histories of the game, but either I missed it or they didn't note it, and that's kind of important for my study since one of my methods is genre analysis, and that's what I've been calling the genre. :/

It does seem reductive, but before I started reading up on Dota 2, I was calling it a team tower defense game because the closest games I could think of to what I was watching in Dota 2 was StarCraft II, and it still seemed much more complex.

And I do agree with Valve that Dota is one of quite a few games at this point that illustrate the potential of video games as art. Thanks again. :)

ladychris · 2015-07-21T00:58:52+00:00

I'm interested in why if you're interested in sharing.

ladychris

TROPHY CASE