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Game Design Decisions and Communication Theories Applied to eSports: A Literature Review

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Videogame Sciences and Arts (VJ 2019)

Abstract

This paper aims to help Game Designers and video game researchers have a better understanding about what are the key motives for the success of eSports broadcasts and why people are more and more into spectating professional video game players perform. As there are few published works regarding the motivations of a eSports spectator, we decided to execute a review on the studies regarding players’ favorites game design decisions, and communication studies about the different interests of a spectator so we could extract similarities of those relevant topics. A first data pool of 320 resources material were gathered at the beginning of the research, and ended with 16 investigations published after 2007. We stated how communication and game design studies complement each other when it concerns delivering a better entertainment experience for the eSports spectators.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, for the support given for the realization of this work, under research grant SFRH/BD/133838/2017.

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Correspondence to Gabriel G. Canavarro .

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Canavarro, G.G., Sequeiros, J.B.F., Fernandes, F. (2019). Game Design Decisions and Communication Theories Applied to eSports: A Literature Review. In: Zagalo, N., Veloso, A., Costa, L., Mealha, Ó. (eds) Videogame Sciences and Arts. VJ 2019. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1164. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37983-4_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37983-4_10

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