Using Collective Metrics to Assess Team Dynamics and Performance in eSports

Introduction

Indicators of small team dynamics developed for traditional field-based sports could be used to measure eSports teams. Small teams are formed to achieve goals in a variety of formal and informal settings. Ranging from warfighter units to recreational sports, small teams are when a group of two or more individuals work together to achieve a goal (Kozlowski & Bell, 2013). Increasingly, virtual teams are forming and performing in electronic sport (eSport) environments (Pedraza-Ramirez et al., 2020). eSports span multiple video game genres and game mechanics (Pedraza-Ramirez et al., 2020), and vary in whether individual players or teams compete against each other. Despite this variability, eSports are generally defined as video games that contain an organized method for players to compete against each other during tournaments and other competitive events following a set of standardized rules (Bányai et al., 2019). For team-based eSports, measuring team effectiveness can be particularly challenging as members are frequently located at different geospatial locations and communicate via computer-mediated channels (Kirkman et al., 2002). With evidence that effectiveness is lower in virtual compared to physically co-located teams (Furumo & Pearson, 2006), the ability to assess the state of virtual teams could provide ways to predict and improve eSport team performance. The present research investigated a novel approach to remotely measure the interactions and dynamics eSports teams: use location-based collective behavior measures previously developed to assess physically co-located teammates. The objective of the present study was to evaluate whether the collective behaviors of eSports teams relate to team dynamics.

Measures of collective behavior have previously been developed and applied to the field-based sport soccer. Collective behaviors refer to coordinated actions of individual members of a team (López-Felip et al., 2018). With regard to soccer, research has focused on spatial placement of players across a field during a match (Duarte et al., 2013). Several competitive eSport video games based on soccer-like mechanics have been developed and widely played by the eSport community. However, collective metrics developed for field-based soccer have yet to be applied to team-based eSport games. The present study examined the extent to which measures of collective behaviors, developed for field-based soccer, can be adapted to assess team dynamics as members perform in virtual environments, specifically, a team-based video game. If similar effects are observed, this would indicate that collective metrics could be applied to team-based eSports across video game genres.