Designing Spectator Interfaces for Competitive Video Games
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Designing Spectator Interfaces for Competitive Video Games Master’s thesis in the Interaction Design and Technologies Program CHRISTIAN CARLSSON AXEL PELLING Department of Applied Information Technology CHALMERS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY Gothenburg, Sweden 2015 Report No. 2015:129 Report Number 2015:129 Designing Spectator Interfaces for Competitive Video Games CHRISTIAN CARLSSON AXEL PELLING Department of Applied Information Technology CHALMERS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY Gothenburg, Sweden 2015 The Author grants to Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg the non- exclusive right to publish the Work electronically and in a non-commercial purpose make it accessible on the Internet. The Author warrants that he/she is the author to the Work, and warrants that the Work does not contain text, pictures or other material that violates copyright law. The Author shall, when transferring the rights of the Work to a third party (for example a publisher or a company), acknowledge the third party about this agreement. If the Authors has signed a copyright agreement with a third party regarding the Work, the Author warrants hereby that he/she has obtained any necessary permission from this third party to let Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg store the Work electronically and make it accessible on the Internet. Designing Spectator Interfaces for Competitive Video Games CHRISTIAN CARLSSON AXEL PELLING © CHRISTIAN CARLSSON, June 2015. © AXEL PELLING, June 2015. Examiner: OLOF TORGERSSON Master Thesis at Chalmers University of Technology Report No. 2015:129 Department of Applied Information Technology Chalmers University of Technology, SE-412 96, Göteborg, Sweden Telephone +46 (0)31-772 10 00 Cover: Final redesign of the Hearthstone spectator interface, see page 73. Department of Applied Information Technology Göteborg, Sweden June 2015 Abstract E-sports is an emerging trend in the video game industry. The amount of spectators and prize pools rise every year. Although a lot of game developers have started looking at having an e- sports scene for their game, many use it is a buzzword for marketing purposes. Having a dedicated spectator interface is an important part of becoming a popular e-sports game. This master thesis aims to produce guidelines on what to consider when designing the spectator interface of an e-sports game. This will be done by analyzing the spectator interfaces of popular e-sports games, regular sports and their video game equivalents, and making redesigned interfaces for four of the games; Starcraft 2, Hearthstone, Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Spectatorship and interface theory will also be considered in order to produce satisfactory redesigns and guidelines. The redesigns will be exposed to the communities of each game in order to gather feedback, both through questionnaires, interviews and comments in an iterative process. The guidelines will be based on the lessons we learn from the redesigns, feedback and theory. Acknowledgement We would like to express our gratitude to our supervisor Staffan Björk who helped us throughout the report with well thought comments, remarks and support. Furthermore we would like to thank the users of Reddit for taking the time to give us feedback and thoughts on the work that was done. Also, we would like to thank Ryan T. Schutter for doing an interview with us concerning his work at Blizzard Entertainment. Finally, we would like to thank Hanna Frank and our loved ones for their support and input throughout the whole process. Table of Contents 1. Introduction .............................................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Games and Genres .............................................................................................................................. 2 1.2 Purpose and Research Question ......................................................................................................... 3 1.3 Delimitations ....................................................................................................................................... 3 1.4 Stakeholders ....................................................................................................................................... 3 2. Terminology .............................................................................................................................................. 5 3. Background ............................................................................................................................................... 7 3.1 The History of E-sports ........................................................................................................................ 7 3.2 Descriptions of the Games .................................................................................................................. 8 3.2.1 StarCraft 2 .................................................................................................................................... 8 3.2.2 Dota 2 ......................................................................................................................................... 10 3.2.3 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive ............................................................................................... 11 3.2.4 Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft .............................................................................................. 12 3.3 Tournaments ..................................................................................................................................... 14 4. Theory ..................................................................................................................................................... 16 4.1 Casters and observers ....................................................................................................................... 16 4.2 Spectators ......................................................................................................................................... 17 4.3 Information Visualization .................................................................................................................. 19 4.3.1 The Gestalt laws ......................................................................................................................... 19 4.3.2 Fonts and Colors ........................................................................................................................ 20 4.4 Basics of Interface Design for Games ................................................................................................ 21 4.4.1 Interface elements ..................................................................................................................... 22 4.5 Interface Minimalism, Transparency and Consistency ..................................................................... 23 5. Methodology ........................................................................................................................................... 25 5.1 Design process .................................................................................................................................. 25 5.2 Questionnaire ................................................................................................................................... 25 5.3 Interviews .......................................................................................................................................... 25 5.4 Prototyping ....................................................................................................................................... 26 5.5 The KJ Method .................................................................................................................................. 27 6. Project Plan ............................................................................................................................................. 28 7. Execution ................................................................................................................................................. 29 7.1 Preliminary study .............................................................................................................................. 29 7.1.1 Theory and Background ............................................................................................................. 29 7.1.2 Methodology .............................................................................................................................. 29 7.2 Naming UI Components .................................................................................................................... 30 7.2.1 Player Components .................................................................................................................... 30 7.2.2 Spectator Components .............................................................................................................. 32 7.2.3 Overlay Components ................................................................................................................. 33 7.3 Study of the Spectator Interfaces ..................................................................................................... 34 7.3.1 Description of the Dota 2 Spectator Interface ........................................................................... 34 7.3.2 Description