Understanding and improving the Dota 2 new player experience
Tracking a community’s growth and sentiment is difficult. After graduating from the University of Arizona in 2012, I wanted to run a research report about my favorite game, Dota 2. This was not a paid project, or endorsed by Valve.
- Role
- Researcher
- Year
- 2013 - 2014
Approach
Created a 90+ point questionnaire and released it through Reddit and other popular Dota 2 channels. I released the questionnaire over two summers and compared the results as the community grew from 100,000 to over 1 million users, and synthesized the results into a report.
Result
Delivered to Valve at the Dota 2 International 2 & 3 in the format of two printed research journals, and provided the community with the results as well in the format of interactive PDF's.
The Dota Experiment 1 | The Dota Experiment 2 Lessons : I learned a ton from this project that still sticks with me today. Primarily, the importance of good survey and experimental design, and the importance of reporting findings and insights concisely. Additionally, I learned how to compose a research report.