Analysing Player Performance with Animated Maps

Over the last years, with the increasing use of telemetry techniques, the extraction of data from video games became a much easier and reliable task. Among many types of video games, MOBAs (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) are one of the most widely played and, consequently, the analysis of game events has received attention of players, spectators, coaches and analysts to assess the performance of players. This data can range from players' position, to more specific events, such as, the position of a player's death. Our main goal is to get a better understanding of which techniques are more adequate to handle the visualization of this type of spatio-temporal information data, associated to player performance analysis in video games. This paper addresses this problem presenting a user study to evaluate the adequacy of animated maps and the analytical strategies followed by players when using spatio-temporal data to analyse player performance. To support the user study, we developed the VisuaLeague prototype for the visualization of in-game player trajectories and events during a match in the MOBA game League of Legends. The results support the adequacy of using the animated maps technique to convey information to users in this context. Moreover, they also point out towards a high degree of importance given to the spatio-temporal components of the data for player performance analysis.