Analysis of Movement Features in Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas

On-line games represent one of the primary instances of virtual environments, in which avatars share a synchronous and persistent virtual world with each other. A careful analysis and a deep understanding of mobility in online games is of paramount importance to properly design mobility models to accurately reproduce avatar movements. In fact, mobility models of avatar have a relevant impact on the architectural design of virtual environments, especially for those based on distributed and decentralized solutions. This paper analyses around 640 hours of mobility of an extremely popular online game genre, the Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas (MOBA). The analysis has revealed interesting characteristics with respect ot the area of interest of the players and their utilization of the game area. Many of the results confirm the speculations of MOBA players, in terms of the phases of the game and the general behaviours of the avatars. Ultimately, our analysis is aimed toward the creation of realistic mobility models for MOBA environments, as well as the development of AI agents for MOBA games.