Diferenças individuais em interação entre jogadores em League of Legends

Abstract

One of the game genres that stands out today is the MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena), a genre that proposes a dispute of two teams formed by 5 players each whose goal is to conquer the enemy battlefield. However, when playing matches with people you do not know, in addition to finding players much more on intra-group dispute than intergroup, as proposed by the game. Therefore, the objective of this research was to investigate traits of sociability, degree of individuality and risk propensity of the players to seek to identify some probable elements that contribute to these observed behaviors. The participants were students of the institution of technical and superior education of the masculine sex. Three stages of research were constituted. The first consisted of an online questionnaire covering sociodemographic information, game preferences and the psychological scales used in the study. The second stage consisted of attending a League of Legends game in a computer lab of the institution. In the third stage the participants answered an online questionnaire informing the perceptions and behaviors observed during the game. The matches were recorded and analyzed a posteriori, with the proper classification of each interaction of two or more players. The results showed that the average propensity for risk taking of the participants had an effect on the preference of game functions. Social exchanges and cooperation behaviors were observed from the perspective of Evolutionary Psychology. Participants who had lower death rates in the match tended to present higher propensity for risk taking scores. In addition, participants who perceive less a contribution of team to the outcome of the match had higher score in Vertical Individualism, which indicates a greater desire to win or be the best. The results may contribute to the understanding of how the expression of individual differences express themselves in cooperative game environments.