By: Paul Bernabe, Mark Estrada, Philip Lee, Gian Medina, JongHyun Yang
Informal Leadership in Defense of the Ancients
Introduction
Defense of the Ancients, or DotA, is modified version (mod) of Blizzard's Warcraft III game. Its most recent versions have been credited to someone who goes by the name of IceFrog. IceFrog is responsible for updating the mod (or map, as it is also called). He also manages at least two websites dedicated to the game, getdota.com, the official site to download the mod, and playdota.com, the official site for general DotA information including guides, replays, and a community forum. DotA is free to play as long as you have Warcraft III installed on your computer. DotA's popularity has been increasing dramatically across the world and according to IceFrog in a Q&A session; he estimates the player base to be around seven to eleven million, excluding those from
Warcraft III is a real-time-strategy (RTS) type game where each player builds a base and generates a number of units. As a mod, DotA retains most of Warcraft III's gameplay. Instead of controlling a base and several units, however, the player only controls one unit, which is called a “hero”. A player can choose or be assigned one of 97 unique heroes that each have its own special ability, strengths, and weaknesses but all are generally balanced. Each player's hero starts out as level 1 and can level up to 25 by killing enemies. There are two teams that can have up to five players each. One team is called the “Sentinel” and the other is the “Scourge.” The Sentinel's base is located at the bottom left of the map while the Scourge's is located on the top right of the map. Each team sends out waves of “creeps” or AI-controlled (computer controlled) units that are weaker than heroes, towards the other team's base, attacking any enemy unit they encounter. To win the game, one side has to destroy the other team's “Ancient,” which is located at the center of each of the teams' bases and is protected by two defense towers. There are three paths or lanes to get to Ancients. There is a top, middle, and bottom lane. The top lane consists of an L-shaped path along the leftmost side and topmost side of the map. The bottom lane, similarly, consists of the path along the rightmost side and bottommost side of the map. The middle lane is the straight diagonal path that cuts through the middle of the map connecting both teams' bases directly. Each lane has three defense towers for each team that must be destroyed before a team can attack inside the enemy team's base. Once inside the enemy team's base, players can destroy structures as well as the two defense towers guarding the Ancient before they can attack the Ancient. The game ends once the Ancient is destroyed. While simple, like any RTS game, there is a tremendous amount of variables that influence the outcome of each game. This is where the aspect of leadership comes in.
Prior to any of the interviews and field studies, our initial assumption of a DotA leader is someone who has outstanding gaming knowledge and skills paired with excellent social skills. Our reasoning that backed this assumption is what some of our research team members have seen in their past gaming experiences. They have seen amazing players that can make their hero so powerful that he is almost unstoppable but is unable to communicate and work well with the team. There have also been players that seem to have so much knowledge of strategies, heroes and item builds but can't support it with even a decent gaming skill set. The question developed then is what qualities make up a leader. The two qualities hypothesized are important but how important are each? In our research, we study what other players perceive leaders and leadership to be in three different aspects: playing with friends, with clan mates, and with random people.
Methods
In order to fully investigate the world of DotA we set out to immerse ourselves in the subject in order to better understand it. We had a team of three investigate each aspect of playing DotA by interviewing people from each category about what they feel a leader is. All names have been altered to prevent their identity being revealed. Someone completely new to the game was introduced to the game and tried playing it for observations on what people stand out as a leader type character. Many people in the team have played DotA for recreation and continued to play it to offer useful insight in our research topic.
Results
The first people interviewed were clan mates of one research team member. A clan in Warcraft III is a group of people who typically share a common interest like competitive or for-fun gaming and sometimes even both. Members of a clan usually play at least one game type. Game types include the actual Warcraft III game as well as a huge number of mods like DotA. Most of the time, however, clan members play a combination of several game types. All Warcraft III clans follow a simple hierarchy. There are four different levels in the hierarchy: Chieftain, Shaman, Grunt, and Peon. The person who created the clan is the one that holds the Chieftain status. Members can be promoted or demoted by the Chieftain to become Shamans (with a limit of 5). Then there are the Grunts, followed by the Peons. Both the Chieftain and the Shamans can promote or demote Grunts and Peons. Peons are typically the newer members of the clan. Both Grunts and Peons hold no privileges.
This clan had set up a Facebook group dedicated to their clan and so contact was made using Facebook messaging. People interviewed who differed in clan rank as well as DotA skill (after playing with them several times, it was easy for him to gauge their skill level). Clan members interviewed include Chuck, the Chieftain who had an above average skill level, Sam, a Shaman who had an expert skill level, and Gem, a Grunt, who had a below average skill level. (He based these arbitrary skill levels on what he perceived his own to be. He believes himself to have an average skill level.) The results of the interview follow:
Chuck believes he is a leader and that he loves to do things his way. He describes a good leader as someone who is also a good follower. He didn't say whether there can be more than one leader in a game; he simply said “one leader one rule.” He hates losing and likes to let “noobs”, new or bad players of the game, know how badly he feels about them and thinks of himself as a bad leader for doing so. His final comment was that a good leader is nothing without the rest of the team. It seems as though he has an idea of what makes a good leader and therefore, may know how he can turn himself from a bad leader to a good leader. But for some reason, he can't or won't do so.
Gem did not consider herself a leader because she can't “carry” (to lead or will the team to victory) a team and because she is still learning the game. She describes a leader as someone who tells the team what and if anything (like strategies on where to be and when to attack etc.) is needed without insulting anyone. She thinks that having more than one leader in a game is possible although she wasn't sure how it would work. She believes that leaders should focus on giving advice rather than insults.
Sam gave the most detailed answers to all the questions. He considers himself a leader since he tries his best to cheer, encourage and motivate his teammates and that he listens to any of their suggestions regarding the strategies. He added that if no one strategy was agreed upon by the team, he could be decisive enough to make a final decision. He says that a player can potentially be a leader if he is determined, confident, have good social skills as well as gaming skills. The only responsibility a leader had, according to Sam, was to lead his team to victory. I found it interesting that he listed qualities that he thought could show good leadership “potential” in a player. This means that he believes that some players may have the same qualities of a leader, and therefore, the same potential, but still may not be able to lead a team (at least not well). He believes there can be more than one leader as long as they can listen to each other. He even reinforces what Chuck mentioned; that a good leader has to be a good follower too. Having weak players frustrate him since he needs to compensate for their lack of skills. He mentions how many players trash-talk noobs but believes that a leader gives advice instead.
During interviews of friends that play DotA the main things they focused on is how the seriousness of the game affected the expectations of people to focus and put in effort. One interesting observation is that there is the possibility of two leaders during one single game working cooperatively. This research initially assumed that there was one leader during a game but the prospect of two can happen during situations where a leader is looking at the battlefield and focusing on what to do while the other leader focuses on the details of what items to get, what hero’s go well in what lane, and just focusing on the small details. The friends interviewed point out that during a game when they play with random people a leader may not emerge and everyone does what they want while during a competition game in a league where wins are recorded, multiple leaders have the possibility of emerging in order to control the battlefield. This kind of synergy can only be achieved when the two leaders know each other in order to properly split roles without confusion. One of the interviews talked about playing in a league and playing on a serious level. They said that they wouldn’t want newer players to play with them because of the more serious tone of the game when it actually counts towards the league. The person also talked about how if a newer player was playing with them for a league match, it wouldn’t be enjoyable because it would be too hard to tell the new person what to do and it would cause problems.
Research of random players proved difficult due to the nature of the game. Since this is a game in which most text spoken are strictly for things about the game, someone asking for an interview is not taken seriously. Of the people who agreed to be interviewed, none of them said they were not a leader type of character. This is different from the other interviews where some people felt they were not a leader type character. This may be due to being surrounded by friends and clan members who can actually vouch for their presence within the game while random people talk with only their selves as witnesses. These random people vouched for the possibility of two leaders during a game but also gave insight into a leader handling new people. The leader tries to deal with the new person as much as possible because losing the new person will cause the match to turn into an uneven 4 vs. 5. This creates a tolerance that some skilled players do not have. These players leave the game if their teammates upset them while a leader tries to cope with the team composition in order to win.
Immersion of a true newcomer to the game of DotA proved fruitful in understanding the skill expected of the average player. With no knowledge of the game the newcomer was warned that new players are not welcome. It is quickly seen while playing the game through the constant use of DotA specific lingo that makes conversations sound like a new language and while performing below the other player’s standards resulted in being told to leave the game and pranked into closing the game. While a leader did not appear to be present during this experience the newcomer did follow one person in particular due to the fact that their hero character looked gigantic and was killing a lot of enemies.
Conclusion
The overall outcome of a DotA game is largely determined by the team’s cohesiveness and coordination. It is absolutely impossible for a team to win with only one outstanding player, much like in team sports where even the best player must have the support of his/her fellow teammates. The team most likely to lose is the one in which players mindlessly pursue their own self-interests (i.e. leveling fast, buying items, or just plain fooling around) rather than engaging in coordinated team attacks or in the defense of their towers. On top of being able to perform consistently well in DotA a player must be able to coordinate attacks and to maneuver teammates into defensive positions in order to be deemed a leader, and even possibly a guild leader.
An interesting aspect of this game is the importance of the individual player in such collaborative play. In the article “From Tree House to Barracks: The Social Life of Guilds in World of Warcraft” authors Williams et al. mention the social dynamics of raiding guilds and their emphasis on the individual. They note that “to perform well, each player must act in the best interests of the group, requiring a high degree of familiarity and practice” (Williams et al. 2006:345). In DotA, individual players are expected to notify their teammates when enemy heroes are missing and; if they don’t do so, they receive harsh treatment for neglecting their teammates.
This type of pressure facilitates many other aspects of the game that are implicitly learned like not to steal an ally’s kill and not to backdoor (destroying an enemy tower behind their wave of creeps). In the article “Virtual(ly) Law: The Emergence of Law in LambdaMOO” players (which are known as “users’) in the virtual environment also have to yield to implicit rule sets that govern behavior such as respecting other users’ property rights. The social construction of a leader in DotA is very much like the loose legislative structures of LambdaMOO where leaders are known as “wizards” and regarded as “benevolent dictators” who set rules of conduct. These “wizards” lead an informal legislative system, which is the “nature of the mechanisms for resolving disputes” (Mnookin 1996). Players in DotA will often appropriate someone as a leader because of their ability to solve disputes among players and to reinforce guidelines of behavior that are constructive for a team.
Since the learning curve for DotA is so high, new players are usually recommended to play offline with computer-controlled players, but they often start immediately playing online with others--causing discontent and oftentimes frustration. Fortunately, the integrity of DotA is not completely ruined when a new player fumbles into a game. Player’s on the newbie’s team could either choose to insult or to “nurture” him/her because there is a collective, goal-oriented mindset and a strong desire to win the game. The article, “Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experience: Analysing Immersion” talks about gameplay experience and how it illicits both positive and negative emotions from players. The authors mention how even stressful and frustrating aspects of a game (like dealing with newbies in DotA) can be interpreted as “positive feelings because players anticipate a resolution and a closure such as winning the game or completing the task” (Ermi, Mayra 2005:3). The concept of “nurturing” a weaker player creates a sense of community and belonging in a goal-oriented gaming environment.
Another characteristic of a leader in DotA is someone with skilled expertise. The article, “Experts at Play: Understanding Skilled Expertise”, examines the game-play of Counter-Strike and the amount of skill and dexterity players display. Similarly, DotA is an intensive game that employs skill and requires good hand-eye coordination to control your hero. The authors chose to analyze Counter-Strike (C.S.) because it’s very different from online MMOs that “feature long-term persistent environments (e.g. Star Wars Galaxies, Everquest, World of Warcraft, or There” (Reeves, Brown, Laurier 2009:206). DotA is similar to FPS (First Person Shooters) in that the gaming environment is not persistent; it is constantly being refreshed when players join a game. So how can a player’s level of expertise be measured? C.S. and DotA experts employ trial-and-error and repetition techniques for improving their game-play and improvising for different situational problems in the virtual environment. As mentioned by the authors: “Our CS players became experts in large part through differentiation repetition, trying out small variations on the “same” response to the enemy, the “same” probing and the use of the “same” weapon. As in chess, every CS game is different precisely because players, in their continual appraisal of their experiences, see each game relative to previous games” (Reeves, Brown, Laurier 2009:224). DotA players also play according to their previous games. The map is always the same and players constantly learn from their mistakes and improve through experience and continual practice. Much like the pattern of C.S. games players often use the same item builds for the different avatars and maneuver around the map in the same response to the enemy, with small variations here and there of course. Although C.S. and DotA are in completely different genres of online games, they have surprisingly similar player-ranking infrastructures. They both feature an in-game menu which shows each player’s K-D Ratio (kill-to-death ratio). A player’s fame also grows with the help of offline gaming sites that feature their replays and screenshots of their games.
Within the game of DotA there is this informal leadership of one person who takes care of the team. It can be seen from the interviews that skill is highly desired while new people are greatly discouraged from every playing with good people because they will only bring everyone down. This study of informal leadership is a deep contrast to formal leadership in other massively multiplayer type games such as WoW. When the situation changes from a pick up game to a long term commitment, the differences in leadership is greatly noticeable.
Guilds are something unique to WoW in comparison to DotA. These guilds are owned by a guild leader who runs everything within the guild. Leadership such as this carries differences from leadership that can be picked up and dropped very easily. Joining a guild and aligning with a guild leader is a long term commitment that you do not easily escape from. There is usually a recruitment process and a trial period for new people within the guild. However, in a pick up game situation such as DotA, you have limited control over who you end up with at the start of each game. This results in the leader having to be able to deal with a variety of people and still rise above this fact in order to accomplish the goals of the game. In WoW, guilds are organized and have much support from the game maker, Blizzard. DotA is an unsupported mod of a game from Blizzard so this results in limited ability for a player to know just how good of a DotA player someone is. When you apply for recruitment in WoW your character can be judged simply by looking at the equipment. This can give a quick analysis of how good a player is without actually talking to them. In informal leadership of DotA, everything has to be earned every time you play. Nothing gets saved within the game that will tell you that this person plays very well. Character levels are not saved, equips are not saved, so the only way to find out if someone is great is to actually observe them within a game.
The effects of this situation on the social aspect of DotA are that it creates an environment in which a new player to the game is not easily welcomed to play. Within the game of WoW, new players are rampant, and are very inquisitive about aspects of the game. There is such a large pool of players that someone out there within the game world will offer assistance and explain the rules of the game (Nardi and Harris 2006:3). When you play a game of DotA you are locked into a game with 9 other people creating a high chance that nobody wants to help you. If you have a new person in your game that already ruins at least 1/10 of the experience because one team is hindered by the inability of the new person to compete. It can be seen within the interviews that new players are not liked by leaders because it makes their goal of winning the match that much harder to accomplish. One interviewer said they enjoyed helping new people with the game but at the same time did not see themselves as a leader. Interactions in WoW may not be that different from DotA except for the fact that you can encounter so many more people in WoW making people that actually want to help appear more often.
The only comparable thing to a guild in DotA is a clan. A clan is a named collection of players who play with each other often either because they are friends outside of the game or became friends within the game. A clan has special properties about it that differentiate it from a guild. While like a guild they are a group of people who work together to accomplish tasks in the game and have a “leader” of the group, the subject of an in game leader is a different topic. From the interviews it can be seen that the clan leader may not always be the leader of a game. This is unusual in the fact that a guild leader in WoW is normally the one that runs the raids. These raids are done by many members of a guild usually which can create an environment where a large guild is created soley to complete game goals (Williams et al 2006:346). While they can assign someone else the task the fact that they’re assigned is interesting because it shows premeditated thought into planning the activity while in DotA game informal leadership can be found during the course of the game and not found before the game. This may be related to the fact that raids in WoW are up to 25 people working together. A game of DotA requires 5 people and while working together with any amount of people requires a lot of focus, 25 people really benefits from planning before the match.
In many ways the social organization of DotA is similar to other online games such as WoW because of its prevalent pair-wise collaboration and interaction of players. Friends who play DotA together will often pair up in the beginning of the game and fight in the same lane just like in WoW how friends often quest and hunt monsters together. This provides a basis for players to learn the game with the shared experience of a close friend and to be able to coordinate much better than players who are merely strangers. The other WoW article, “Strangers and Friends: Collaborative Play in World of Warcraft” offers insight into a particular form of social group that is not only found in WoW but also in DotA They define “knots” as “unique groups that form to complete a task of relatively short duration” (Nardi, Harris 2006:6). These “knots” are in the form of parties, quests, and other fun activities in WoW that have short-term goals. DotA players are always in this type of social group when they enter a game. The short-term goal of the 1 hour long match is to destroy the enemy ancient and this involves instances of collaboration amongst players involving the defense or attack of towers or even the slaying of Roshan (a powerful neutral creep that drops a valuable item).
The brief collaborations of strangers in a DotA game are in many ways similar to the collaboration spaces of strangers playing WoW because of the meaningful tasks that must be completed quickly and systematically. The social atmosphere is also similar because of the prevalence of beneficial spells and a player’s ability to “buff” fellow teammates as “acts of kindness to maintain a mutually beneficial atmosphere” (Nardi and Harris 2006:3). Players feel fulfillment in their achievements and accomplishments as a team.
In conclusion this form of informal leadership in DotA requires someone of high skill who can also interact very well with others. A key difference between guild leaders and informal leaders is that a leader in DotA only needs to focus on getting the mission accomplished because there is a high chance you will not meet that person again. Formal leadership is a long term commitment meaning that human interaction can be weighed more heavily than skill for the sake of keeping the guild together. With DotA’s commitment to high level of skill play and little sympathy for new players, informal leadership is largely based on skill more so than ability to speak effectively. The two works in tandem but gaming skill will always outpace good socialization skills. What this leads to is the discussion of what happens when skill is no longer a factor like in a game where everyone knows what they are doing and everything becomes almost robotic. If everyone voices just enough information to provide for the team to win the game does that make every person a leader or does it mean there was no leader for that game? As important as informal leadership is there is also the fact that games can be played and even won without a leader. How does this get accomplished and what made the game have no leader? Unfortunately with the time given these questions can not be properly answered but since a leader character is a role known but never formally appointed and has a unique development between each passing game, the resulting conclusions can vary wildly based on what a person sees as ideal traits of a leader.
Works Cited
Bonnie Nardi and Justin Harris, Strangers and Friends: Collaborative Play in World of Warcraft, 2006.
Dmitri Williams, Nicolas Ducheneaut, Li Xiong, Yuanyuan Zhang, Nick Yee, and Eric Nickell, From Tree House to Barracks: The Social Life of Guilds in World of Warcraft. Games & Culture 1(4):338–61, 2006.
Jennifer L. Mnookin, Virtual(ly) Law: The Emergence of Law in LambdaMOO. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 2(1), 1996.
Laura Ermi and Frans Mayra, Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experience: Analysing Immersion, An Introduction to Game Studies: Games in Culture 2005.
Stuart Reeves, Barry Brown, and Eric Laurier, Experts at Play: Understanding Skilled Expertise. Games and Culture 4(3):205–27, 2009.
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