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Why Players use Pings and Annotations in Dota 2

Published: 02 May 2017 Publication History

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.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI '17: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    May 2017
    7138 pages
    ISBN:9781450346559
    DOI:10.1145/3025453
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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    Published: 02 May 2017

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    Author Tags

    1. annotations
    2. communication tools
    3. dota 2
    4. gestures
    5. groupware
    6. mobas
    7. motivation
    8. online games
    9. pings

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    • (2023)Esports as a Cultural Microcosm for Studying PsycholinguisticsGames and Culture10.1177/1555412023116455419:3(357-372)Online publication date: 20-Mar-2023
    • (2023)Understanding Player’s Gesture-Based Communicative Behavior in MOBA GamesProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36110617:CHI PLAY(1068-1090)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
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    • (2021)Leveling Up Teamwork in EsportsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34491235:CSCW1(1-30)Online publication date: 22-Apr-2021
    • (2021)Investigating the Effects of Individual Cognitive Styles on Collaborative GameplayACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/344579228:4(1-49)Online publication date: 11-Aug-2021
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