Win Prediction in Esports: Mixed-Rank Match Prediction in Multi-player Online Battle Arena Games

Esports has emerged as a popular genre for players as well as spectators, supporting a global entertainment industry. Esports analytics has evolved to address the requirement for data-driven feedback, and is focused on cyber-athlete evaluation, strategy and prediction. Towards the latter, previous work has used match data from a variety of player ranks from hobbyist to professional players. However, professional players have been shown to behave differently than lower ranked players. Given the comparatively limited supply of professional data, a key question is thus whether mixed-rank match datasets can be used to create data-driven models which predict winners in professional matches and provide a simple in-game statistic for viewers and broadcasters. Here we show that, although there is a slightly reduced accuracy, mixed-rank datasets can be used to predict the outcome of professional matches, with suitably optimized configurations

Narrative Bytes : Data-Driven Content Production in Esports

Esports - video games played competitively that are broadcast to large audiences - are a rapidly growing new form of mainstream entertainment. Esports borrow from traditional TV, but are a qualitatively different genre, due to the high flexibility of content capture and availability of detailed gameplay data. Indeed, in esports, there is access to both real-time and historical data about any action taken in the virtual world. This aspect motivates the research presented here, the question asked being: can the information buried deep in such data, unavailable to the human eye, be unlocked and used to improve the live broadcast compilations of the events? In this paper, we present a large-scale case study of a production tool called Echo, which we developed in close collaboration with leading industry stakeholders. Echo uses live and historic match data to detect extraordinary player performances in the popular esport Dota 2, and dynamically translates interesting data points into audience-facing graphics. Echo was deployed at one of the largest yearly Dota 2 tournaments, which was watched by 25 million people. An analysis of 40 hours of video, over 46,000 live chat messages, and feedback of 98 audience members showed that Echo measurably affected the range and quality of storytelling, increased audience engagement, and invoked rich emotional response among viewers

The Winchcombe meteorite, a unique and pristine witness from the outer solar system.

Direct links between carbonaceous chondrites and their parent bodies in the solar system are rare. The Winchcombe meteorite is the most accurately recorded carbonaceous chondrite fall. Its pre-atmospheric orbit and cosmic-ray exposure age confirm that it arrived on Earth shortly after ejection from a primitive asteroid. Recovered only hours after falling, the composition of the Winchcombe meteorite is largely unmodified by the terrestrial environment. It contains abundant hydrated silicates formed during fluid-rock reactions, and carbon- and nitrogen-bearing organic matter including soluble protein amino acids. The near-pristine hydrogen isotopic composition of the Winchcombe meteorite is comparable to the terrestrial hydrosphere, providing further evidence that volatile-rich carbonaceous asteroids played an important role in the origin of Earth's water