An analysis of online match-based games

Online match-based games, such as the online versions of the board game of chess, have already captured a global audience of tens of millions of players. Through a unique combination of characteristics, a relatively short duration - often "coffee-break" minutes instead of hours of continuous gameplay-, weak correlation between matches, and clear emphasis on winning, match-based games may serve a unique segment of the global player population. Although this segment of the gaming population may later become consumers of more sophisticated Massively Multiuser Virtual Environment (MMVE) systems, few previous studies have focused on the characteristics of online match-based games. Complementing them, in this work we collect and analyze information corresponding to 5 online match-based game datasets, totaling over 170 million matches played by a population of 1.3 million unique gamers over 14 years. Our analysis focuses on workload characteristics, win ratio, and player evolution. Studies such as ours may guide the multi-disciplinary field of MMVE design by providing new understanding of player lifetime and behavior. For example, we find a correlation between the interactivity of match-based games and the retention of players over both long and short term, that friendship does not always help to perform better in games, and that in match-based games each player explores tens of different play strategies over time. © 2012 IEEE.