Why players use pings and annotations in Dota 2

Publication Type

Conference Proceeding Article

Publication Date

5-2017

Abstract

Groupware research has long focused on representing gestures as a means to facilitate collaboration. However, this work has not led to wide support of gesturing in commercial groupware systems. In contrast, Dota 2, a popular MOBA game, provides two frequently-used gesturing tools: annotations - freely drawn lines on top of the gamespace - and pings - a combination of animation and sound indicating a point of interest. While gesturing tools are important for quickly coordinating with teammates in Dota 2, there is little information about how and why people use them. To gather this information, we performed two complementary studies: an interaction analysis of eight game replays, and a survey of 167 experienced players. Our findings include: six distinct motivations for the use of gesturing tools; when and how frequently gesture motivations occur during games; and, that players find pings an essential tool for winning, but not annotations. Our findings provide new directions for the design of gesturing tools in groupware and online games.

Keywords

Annotations, Communication tools, Dota 2, Gestures, Groupware, MOBAs, Motivation, Online games, Pings

Discipline

Information Security

Research Areas

Information Systems and Management

Publication

Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Denver, United States, May 6 - 11,

First Page

1978

Last Page

1982

ISBN

9781450346559

Identifier

10.1145/3025453.3025967

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

City or Country

New York

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025967

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