Summary

The high-level objective of this study was to understand user’s opinions and perceptions of Teamfight Tactics (TFT), what sorts of platforms they rely on for information about TFT, and their opinion of the dev team. Through the usage of attitudinal research, insights into the opinions players have towards TFT revealed a generally positive image of Teamfight Tactics (TFT) and its dev team, with some interesting caveats.

Organizations can then leverage these insights to improve user experience and dev-player relations.

Background

Teamfight Tactics (TFT) is an auto battler game developed and published by Riot Games in Los Angeles, USA. Players compete online against seven other opponents by building a team of powerful champions to be the last one standing.

TFT is one of the most popular games on both PC and mobile platforms (Android and iOS) in the world with over 200 million active monthly users and remains the most popular auto-battler in the world.

Stephen “Mortdog” Mortimer is the Game Design Director on Teamfight Tactics at Riot Games. He was previously a lead designer at Nintendo working on Mario IP. On weekends, he publicly streams his gameplay of Teamfight Tactics, field questions from chat and gives insights on TFT content. His Twitch channel and Twitter have over 100k followers apiece.

This project relies on the usage of Qualtrics, Surveys, and Semi-Structured Interviews.

Problem

This exploration was designed to gather attitudinal data about TFT, its relevant sources of information, and the dev team.

The high-level goal of this exploration was to determine:

1. Understand what platforms users rely on to get information about TFT.

2. Understand what opinions users hold of the TFT development team.

3. Understand what opinions users hold of TFT in its present state.

Answering these questions would help stakeholders determine what platforms are underutilized, what works when communicating developments in TFT with players, and perceptions players hold when thinking about TFT.

Participants

Casual Players

Make up the vast majority of players, spend less time and are less emotionally invested into the game as compared to hardcore players.

A typical casual player might say:

“I play for fun, when I have time”

“If it’s not fun, I’ll play something else”

“If something else is more fun, I’ll play that”

Core Players

A minority of the playerbase, but generally significantly more invested into the game. Generally index more heavily on competitive experiences, especially in the context of TFT.

A typical core player might say:

“I make time to play the game”

“If it’s not fun, I’ll complain on Twitter”

“I’m addicted to this game”

Core players are significantly more likely to spend time and money on games as opposed to casual players, but casual players help drive metrics such as hours played. Casual players can become core players over time, and vice versa.

For this study, I wanted to focus my efforts on core players given their increased awareness about the game, their continuous investment into it and its systems, and the support they offer to the community. They are also generally more critical of game-state, often hold stronger opinions, and offer more feedback based on their intuition, whether that feedback is justified or backed up by data. Core players are also more easily found due to their presence on TFT-related forums.

Recruiting:

Demographic: Active players of TFT who are engaged with TFT (core players)

Sampling Method: Survey posted through Mortdog’s (TFT Design Director) community. (convenience sampling)

The pool of players I recruited had a heavier amount of German participants, so the survey was also translated into German to facilitate more natural responses.

In general, people who join servers of established TFT influencers are more likely to be core players. However, the status of core player was checked in the survey by asking participants to estimate how many hours they spent per week playing TFT. Individuals playing TFT for more than 4 hours a week were classified as “core players”.

Method

Methodology

Phase 1: Conduct user surveys for target demographic (active players of Teamfight Tactics and video games in general)
Phase 2: Short interviews with 7 players

Sample Questions

Phase 1

Demographic questions on age and weekly time investment into TFT were collected.

On average, how many hours a week have you played Teamfight Tactics: Gadgets and Gizmos?

Ranked-choice questions were utilized to gather data related to how often players rely on media sources for information about TFT.

Please rank the following according to how much you rely on them for information about TFT.

Riot Games (website)
3rd party websites (Surrender@20, Reddit, YouTube etc.)
TFT Dev Social Media (e.g. Mortdog's Twitter, Twitch, or YouTube)
Other (free response)

Quantitative data was collected through the use of 5-point agree-disagree Likert questions on a matrix table, questions asked included:

Thinking about the TFT Dev Team, please indicate to what extent you agree with each of the following statements.

The TFT Dev Team is arrogant.
The TFT Dev Team doesn't listen to valid feedback.
The TFT Dev Team's interactions with the community are helpful.
The TFT Dev Team cares about the state of the game as much as the players do.

Thinking about your most recent Teamfight Tactics game-session, please indicate to what extent you agree with each of the following statements.

The game provided me with interesting options.
Luck has a greater influence than skill in my ability to place Top 4 in Teamfight Tactics
I look forward to the mid-set expansion later in the year.

These questions were supplemented with open-ended questions, giving participants an opportunity to reveal attitudes about gameplay in TFT and also give more detailed opinions:

Please bring to mind an outstanding positive or negative experience you had in your most recent game-session in Teamfight Tactics:

Try to describe this particular experience as accurately, detailed and concrete as possible.
What were your thoughts and feelings?
How did you respond emotionally to this event in the game?

Phase 2

Semi-structured interviews were conducted to get into the reasoning why players felt the way they did and gain further insight into the reasoning behind their answers.

Why do you rely more on TFT Dev Social Media/3rd party platforms over the other options for news about TFT?
What makes you think that the TFT Dev Team is arrogant?

Findings

What platforms do players use and trust to get information about TFT?

The vast majority of players who are actively in Mortdog’s community ALSO generally think that TFT Dev social media is the most valuable point of interaction.

• While a trend for liking Mortdog’s social media content was expected given the sample, the extent of the preference over official mediums like the League of Legends website or 3rd party forums like Reddit or Inven was unexpected.

• When interrogated why people preferred TFT Dev Social Media (ranked 1st or 2nd), similar themes were expressed.

“Ease of access and delivery of material. I use 3rd part websites to look up trending comps and itemization, but Twitch and listening to other people explain nuances is how I learn a lot more about the game.”

“I enjoy the way the dev team presents changes and explains them.”

While this finding is not surprising given the sample, it does indicate that for that segment of players, TFT Dev Social Media is the most useful resource for them. In a more representative sample, it would be useful to see what sources of information people find most helpful when navigating TFT content.

How do users perceive developers within TFT?

As expected from this sample, the vast majority of respondents felt positive feelings towards the TFT dev team. While selection bias plays a large role in the responses, I would be interested in looking at the opinions of players who have more negative or neutral feelings about the TFT Dev Team (on platforms such as Reddit).

The ability to recall negative experiences of playing TFT did not impact their perception of the TFT dev team. This was reflected in responses where players who had negative experiences also had faith that the TFT Dev Team would fix and resolve those experiences quickly.

It was interesting to note that responses to the statement, “The TFT Dev Team is arrogant.” had very high variance. In conjunction with the sample likely having more positive feelings towards the TFT Dev Team (and by extension, Mortdog), this might indicate that despite the presence of positive feelings towards the TFT Dev Team as an aggregate, many individuals would likely characterize the TFT devs as having an arrogant streak.

How do people perceive the current product state from a player point of view?

Players as a whole remain excited for new and upcoming content in TFT. In addition, players agree that the game offers interesting and meaningful decisions in TFT. That being said, there is significantly more of a mixed opinion on the impact luck has on an individuals’ ability to top 4.

This sample indicates that many players view that the game is something that they’re willing to come back to, and in conjunction with conclusions drawn earlier, reveals an optimism for TFT as a product.

Limitations

Unfortunately, I am still limited by my lack of resources most notably:

1. Access to Data

   • I cannot cross-validate these findings to internal data simply because they’re private and not available to outsiders like me. It would have been helpful to compare metrics from older sets and see what trends are occurring with respect to KPIs. All I know is what has been made public.

2. A representative sample

   • This is by and large the most critical piece because the sampling method (a convenience sample) is unfortunately extremely biased and not generalizable to the vast majority of TFT players.

   • A representative sample would have been best obtained through random sampling of engaged players who had played TFT in a certain patch.

   • People who participate in a Discord server, especially one owned by a dev, are MUCH more likely to have positive opinions about said dev as opposed to a general user. I would expect a representative sample to have more neutral or negative opinions about the state of TFT or perception of developers.

   • In addition, Mortdog’s Discord server skews heavily towards North American and European (DE and UK) players. The findings could be WILDLY different in other key markets such as China or SEA.

3. Threats to validity

   • Situational noise also probably plays a role in responses. If somebody just lost a game of TFT, their responses could be more biased to have negative opinions. Conversely, somebody who just won a game of TFT are possibly more likely to have more positive opinions. A way to control this would be to have a between-groups design where people’s responses are compared to the fact whether they lost or won their last TFT game.

Next Steps

With that being said, the trends observed in this study on a smaller scale may be worth exploring in a larger, more representative sample, and give insights on the dynamics that players have with developers and their experience playing TFT.

Given additional resources, I would like to gather more representative data (by not using convenience samples) that can help lead to:

1. An investment in channels of engagement that engaged players/users use, across regions and cultures.

2. Refinement of dev-player engagement and communication strategies

3. Establishing frameworks on the effects of TFT influencers and its impact on game health and player perception.