What Players Want: Information Needs of Players on Post-Game Visualizations

With the rise of competitive online gaming and esports, players’ ability to review, reflect upon, and improve their in-game performance has become important. Post-play visualizations are key for such improvements. Despite the increased interest in visualizations of gameplay, research specifically informing the design of player-centric visualizations is currently limited. As with all visualizations, their design should, however, be guided by a thorough understanding of the goals to be achieved and which information is important and why. This paper reports on a mixed-methods study exploring the information demands posed by players on post-play visualizations and the goals they pursue with such visualizations. We focused on three genres that enjoy great popularity within the competitive gaming scene. Our results provide useful guideposts on which data to focus on by offering an overview of the relevance of different in-game metrics across genres. Lastly, we outline high-level implications for the design of post-play visualizations.