research-article

Anomaly Detection in Player Performances in Multiplayer Online Battle Arena Games

Authors:

Shreyashi Ganguly,

Borchuluun Yadamsuren,

Anders Drachen,

Simon DemediukAuthors Info & Claims

ACSW '22: Proceedings of the 2022 Australasian Computer Science Week

Pages 23 - 30

https://doi.org/10.1145/3511616.3513095

Published: 21 March 2022 Publication History

Abstract

Esports are digital video games that are played professionally. In recent years there has been a growing need to improve the broadcast experience by incorporating real-time data-driven analytics. In these same games, when played by the general public, there is a growing issue of cheating. Using the popular esport and video game DOTA 2 as a case study, we present a novel application of Archetype Analysis that can be used for anomaly detection in player performance. We show how these anomalies can be utilised for both esports broadcasting and cheat detection.

References

[1]

Joseph Ahn, William Collis, and Seth Jenny. 2020. The one billion dollar myth: Methods for sizing the massively undervalued esports revenue landscape. International Journal of Esports 1, 1 (2020).

[2]

Myat Aung, Simon Demediuk, Yuan Sun, Ye Tu, Yu Ang, Siva Nekkanti, Shantanu Raghav, Diego Klabjan, Rafet Sifa, and Anders Drachen. 2019. The trails of Just Cause 2: spatio-temporal player profiling in open-world games. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. 1–11.

Digital Library

[3]

C. Bauckhage, K. Kersting, F. Hoppe, and C. Thurau. 2015. Archetypal Analysis as an Autoencoder. In Proc. Workshop New Challenges in Neural Computation.

[4]

Eli Bingham, Jonathan P. Chen, Martin Jankowiak, Fritz Obermeyer, Neeraj Pradhan, Theofanis Karaletsos, Rohit Singh, Paul Szerlip, Paul Horsfall, and Noah D. Goodman. 2018. Pyro: Deep Universal Probabilistic Programming. Journal of Machine Learning Research(2018).

[5]

F. Block, V. Hodge, S. Hobson, N. Sephton, S Devlin, M.F. Ursu, A. Drachen, and P.I. Cowling. 2018. Narrative Bytes: Data-Driven Content Production in Esports.Proceedings of the 2018 ACM International Conference on Interactive Experiences for TV and Online Video.(2018), 29–41.

[6]

Eoin Conroy, Magdalena Kowal, Adam J. Toth, and Mark J. Campbell. 2021. Boosting: Rank and skill deception in esports. Entertainment Computing 36 (2021), 100393.

[7]

A. Cutler and L. Breiman. 1994. Archetypal Analysis. Technometrics 36, 4 (1994), 338–347.

[8]

Simon Demediuk, Athanasios Kokkinakis, Moni Sagarika Patra, Justus Robertson, Ben Kirman, Alistair Coates, Alan Chitayat, Jonathan Hook, Isabelle Nolle, Oluseyi Olarewaju, Daniel Slawson, Marian Ursu, Florian Block, and Anders Drachen. 2021. Performance Index: A New Way to Compare Players. In MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.

[9]

Simon Demediuk, Peter York, Anders Drachen, James Alfred Walker, and Florian Block. 2019. Role Identification for Accurate Analysis in Dota 2. In Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment, Vol. 15. 130–138.

[10]

Phai Vu Dinh, Thanh Nguyen Nguyen, and Quang Uy Nguyen. 2016. An empirical study of anomaly detection in online games. In 2016 3rd National Foundation for Science and Technology Development Conference on Information and Computer Science (NICS). IEEE, 171–176.

[11]

Anders Drachen and Matthias Schubert. 2013. Spatial game analytics. In Game Analytics. Springer, 365–402.

[12]

Christoph Eggert, Marc Herrlich, Jan Smeddinck, and Rainer Malaka. 2015. Classification of player roles in the team-based multi-player game dota 2. In International Conference on Entertainment Computing. Springer, 112–125.

Digital Library

[13]

Magy Seif El-Nasr, Anders Drachen, and Alessandro Canossa. 2016. Game analytics. Springer.

[14]

Tim Fields and Brandon Cotton. 2011. Social game design: Monetization methods and mechanics. CRC Press.

[15]

M. Frank and P. Wolfe. 1956. An Algorithm for Quadratic Programming. Naval Research Logistics Quarterly 3, 1-2 (1956).

[16]

Lynn Gao, James Judd, Dave Wong, and Jamie Lowder. 2013. Classifying dota 2 hero characters based on play style and performance. Univ. of Utah Course on ML(2013).

[17]

Anna Guitart, Shi Hui Tan, Ana Fernandez del Rio, Pei Pei Chen, and Africa Perianez. 2019. From non-paying to premium: predicting user conversion in video games with ensemble learning. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. 1–9.

Digital Library

[18]

Victoria J Hodge, Sam Michael Devlin, Nicholas John Sephton, Florian Oliver Block, Peter Ivan Cowling, and Anders Drachen. 2019. Win Prediction in Multi-Player Esports: Live Professional Match Prediction. IEEE Transactions on Games(2019).

[19]

Nate Hoobler, Greg Humphreys, and Maneesh Agrawala. 2004. Visualizing competitive behaviors in multi-user virtual environments. In IEEE Visualization 2004. IEEE, 163–170.

Digital Library

[20]

Irdeto. 2018. Widespread Cheating in Multiplayer Online Games Drives Gamers in Asia Pacific Away. https://irdeto.com/news/widespread-cheating-in-multiplayer-online-games-drives-gamers-in-asia-pacific-away/ (Jun 2018).

[21]

Albert B Jeng and Chia Ling Lee. 2013. A study on online game cheating and the effective defense. In International Conference on Industrial, Engineering and Other Applications of Applied Intelligent Systems. Springer, 518–527.

Digital Library

[22]

Donald R Jones, Matthias Schonlau, and William J Welch. 1998. Efficient global optimization of expensive black-box functions. Journal of Global optimization 13, 4 (1998), 455–492.

Digital Library

[23]

Ah Reum Kang, Jiyoung Woo, Juyong Park, and Huy Kang Kim. 2013. Online game bot detection based on party-play log analysis. Computers & Mathematics with Applications 65, 9 (2013), 1384–1395.

[24]

Adam Katona, Ryan Spick, Victoria J Hodge, Simon Demediuk, Florian Block, Anders Drachen, and James Alfred Walker. 2019. Time to Die: Death Prediction in Dota 2 using Deep Learning. In 2019 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG). IEEE, 1–8.

Digital Library

[25]

Harold J Kushner. 1964. A new method of locating the maximum point of an arbitrary multipeak curve in the presence of noise. (1964).

[26]

Andrey Lange, Andrey Somov, Anton Stepanov, and Evgeny Burnaev. 2021. Building a Behavioral Profile and Assessing the Skill of Video Game Players. IEEE Sensors Journal 22, 1 (2021), 481–488.

[27]

Larry Mellon. 2009. Applying metrics driven development to MMO costs and risks. Versant Corporation (2009).

[28]

Pejman Mirza-Babaei, Günter Wallner, Graham McAllister, and Lennart E Nacke. 2014. Unified visualization of quantitative and qualitative playtesting data. In CHI’14 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 1363–1368.

[29]

Newzoo. 2021. Newzoo Global Esports Market Report 2020: Light Version. https://newzoo.com/insights/trend-reports/newzoo-global-esports-market-report-2020-light-version/ (Feb 2021).

[30]

Newzoo. 2021. Newzoo Global Games Market Report 2021 : Free Version. https://newzoo.com/insights/trend-reports/newzoo-global-games-market-report-2021-free-version (July 2021).

[31]

Truong-Huy D Nguyen, Magy Seif El-Nasr, and Alessandro Canossa. 2015. Glyph: Visualization Tool for Understanding Problem Solving Strategies in Puzzle Games. In FDG.

[32]

Aline Normoyle and Shane T Jensen. 2021. Bayesian Learning of Play Styles in Multiplayer Video Games. arXiv preprint arXiv:2112.07437(2021).

[33]

Dmitry Nozhnin. 2012. Predicting churn: When do veterans quit. Gamasutra, August 30th(2012).

[34]

Martin Pelikan, David E Goldberg, Erick Cantú-Paz, 1999. BOA: The Bayesian optimization algorithm. In Proceedings of the genetic and evolutionary computation conference GECCO-99, Vol. 1. Citeseer, 525–532.

[35]

Carl Edward Rasmussen and Hannes Nickisch. 2010. Gaussian processes for machine learning (GPML) toolbox. The Journal of Machine Learning Research 11 (2010), 3011–3015.

Digital Library

[36]

Riot. [n.d.]. League of Legends. https://euw.leagueoflegends.com/en/ Accessed: 14-11-20201.

[37]

François Rioult, Jean-Philippe Métivier, Boris Helleu, Nicolas Scelles, and Christophe Durand. 2014. Mining tracks of competitive video games. AASRI Procedia 8(2014), 82–87.

[38]

Dymitr Ruta, Ling Cen, Ming Liu, and Quang Hieu Vu. 2021. Automated feature engineering for prediction of victories in online computer games. In 2021 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data). IEEE, 5672–5678.

[39]

Rafet Sifa. 2018. An Overview of Frank-Wolfe Optimization for Stochasticity Constrained Interpretable Matrix and Tensor Factorization. In Proc. ICANN. Springer.

[40]

Rafet Sifa. 2019. Matrix and tensor factorization for profiling player behavior. LeanPub (2019).

[41]

Rafet Sifa, Anders Drachen, and Christian Bauckhage. 2018. Profiling in Games: Understanding Behavior from Telemetry. Social Interactions in Virtual Worlds: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (2018).

[42]

Rafet Sifa, Anders Drachen, and Christian Bauckhauge. 2018. Profiling in Games: Understanding Behavior from Telemetry. In Social Interaction in Virtual Worlds. 337–374.

[43]

Rafet Sifa, Anders Drachen, Florian Block, Spencer Moon, Anisha Dubhashi, Hao Xiao, Zili Li, Diego Klabjan, and Simon Demediuk. 2021. Archetypal Analysis Based Anomaly Detection for Improved Storytelling in Multiplayer Online Battle Arena Games. In 2021 Australasian Computer Science Week Multiconference. 1–8.

[44]

Rafet Sifa, Fabian Hadiji, Julian Runge, Anders Drachen, Kristian Kersting, and Christian Bauckhage. 2015. Predicting purchase decisions in mobile free-to-play games. In Eleventh Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference.

[45]

Jasper Snoek, Hugo Larochelle, and Ryan P Adams. 2012. Practical bayesian optimization of machine learning algorithms. Advances in neural information processing systems 25 (2012).

[46]

Steam. [n.d.]. OpenDota - Dota 2 Statistics. https://www.opendota.com/

[47]

Hi-Rez Studios. [n.d.]. Smite. https://www.hirezstudios.com/ Accessed: 14-11-20201.

[48]

KaiShen Tseng. 2021. Predicting Victories in Video Games: Using Single XGBoost with Feature Engineering: IEEE BigData 2021 Cup-Predicting Victories in Video Games. In 2021 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data). IEEE, 5679–5682.

[49]

Valve. [n.d.]. Dota 2. https://www.dota2.com/ Accessed: 14-11-20201.

[50]

Quang Hieu Vu, Dymitr Ruta, Ling Cen, and Ming Liu. 2021. A combination of general and specific models to predict victories in video games. In 2021 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data). IEEE, 5683–5690.

[51]

Günter Wallner and Simone Kriglstein. 2014. PLATO: A visual analytics system for gameplay data. Computers & Graphics 38(2014), 341–356.

Digital Library

[52]

Haitao Xiao, Yuling Liu, Dan Du, and Zhigang Lu. 2021. WP-GBDT: An Approach for Winner Prediction using Gradient Boosting Decision Tree. In 2021 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data). IEEE, 5691–5698.

Cited By

Pepatang VKotrajaras V(2024)Machine Learning Model for Skill Level Prediction in Multiplayer Online Battle Arena2024 28th International Computer Science and Engineering Conference (ICSEC)10.1109/ICSEC62781.2024.10770753(1-6)Online publication date: 6-Nov-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSEC62781.2024.10770753
Lee SJeong EKim DKong J(2023)The influence of psychological needs and motivation on game cheating: insights from self-determination theoryFrontiers in Psychology10.3389/fpsyg.2023.127873814Online publication date: 22-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1278738
Rogers JAygun REtzkorn L(2023)Confidence-Based Cheat Detection Through Constrained Order Inference of Temporal SequencesInternational Journal of Semantic Computing10.1142/S1793351X2360003617:02(223-247)Online publication date: 10-Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.1142/S1793351X23600036
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Anomaly Detection in Player Performances in Multiplayer Online Battle Arena Games

Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.

Recommendations

DraftRec: Personalized Draft Recommendation for Winning in Multi-Player Online Battle Arena Games
WWW '22: Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2022

This paper presents a personalized character recommendation system for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) games which are considered as one of the most popular online video game genres around the world. When playing MOBA games, players go through a ...
Archetypal Analysis Based Anomaly Detection for Improved Storytelling in Multiplayer Online Battle Arena Games
ACSW '21: Proceedings of the 2021 Australasian Computer Science Week Multiconference

Anomalies in esports refer to situations when something unexpected or unlikely happens. Rapid performance changes, unusual strategies, extraordinary plays, accelerated resource gains or team wipeouts comprise examples, but anomalies fundamentally ...
MOBA Coach: Exploring and Analyzing Multiplayer Online Battle Arena Data
Advances in Visual Computing
Abstract
Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games such as League of Legends (LoL) belong to the most played competitive game genres. This genre also represents a significant part of the electronic sports (e-sports) domain. MOBA e-sports events enjoy ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

ACSW '22: Proceedings of the 2022 Australasian Computer Science Week

February 2022

260 pages

ISBN:9781450396066

DOI:10.1145/3511616

Copyright © 2022 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 21 March 2022

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed limited

Funding Sources

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Conference

ACSW 2022

ACSW 2022: Australasian Computer Science Week 2022

February 14 - 18, 2022

Brisbane, Australia

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 61 of 141 submissions, 43%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

6
Total Citations
View Citations
317
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)59
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)9

Reflects downloads up to 09 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Pepatang VKotrajaras V(2024)Machine Learning Model for Skill Level Prediction in Multiplayer Online Battle Arena2024 28th International Computer Science and Engineering Conference (ICSEC)10.1109/ICSEC62781.2024.10770753(1-6)Online publication date: 6-Nov-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSEC62781.2024.10770753
Lee SJeong EKim DKong J(2023)The influence of psychological needs and motivation on game cheating: insights from self-determination theoryFrontiers in Psychology10.3389/fpsyg.2023.127873814Online publication date: 22-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1278738
Rogers JAygun REtzkorn L(2023)Confidence-Based Cheat Detection Through Constrained Order Inference of Temporal SequencesInternational Journal of Semantic Computing10.1142/S1793351X2360003617:02(223-247)Online publication date: 10-Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.1142/S1793351X23600036
Teng ZPfau JEl-Nasr M(2023)Visualization-based Iterative Segmentation to Augment Video Game Analytics2023 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG)10.1109/CoG57401.2023.10333151(1-2)Online publication date: 21-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/CoG57401.2023.10333151
Ouellette NBaseri YKaur B(2023)I Am Bot the “Fish Finder”: Detecting Malware that Targets Online Gaming PlatformProceedings of Eighth International Congress on Information and Communication Technology10.1007/978-981-99-3243-6_21(261-274)Online publication date: 25-Jul-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3243-6_21
Rogers JAygun REtzkorn L(2022)Cheat Detection Through Temporal Inference of Constrained Orders for Subsequences2022 IEEE Fifth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge Engineering (AIKE)10.1109/AIKE55402.2022.00014(45-52)Online publication date: Sep-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/AIKE55402.2022.00014

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents