Andrew Curley
Production
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What Motivates Esports Fans? A Data-Driven Approach to Business
and Development Strategy
While competitive gaming traces its patterns that led me to create two
into an industry of its own (commonly which I called “Spectacle” and “Human
roots back several decades, its evolution
referred to as “esports”) is a relatively new
phenomenon. In recent years, the esports
industry has experienced explosive but
unstructured growth, resulting in huge
variance in profitability for developers. I
wanted my thesis to provide the esports
Interest.” I was able to prove with a high
degree of reliability that Overwatch fans
motivated by these categories were likely
to consume more Overwatch esports
content on average.
industry with a research model that could I learned many things about the esports
uncertainty. management over the course of my
help developers mitigate some of this
Choosing Blizzard Entertainment’s
2016 team-based shooter Overwatch
as my case study, I distributed a survey
to collect data on motivations for
esports consumption, using a common
and proven measurement scale from
traditional sports. In analyzing the data
from over 1000 respondents, I discovered
50
overarching motivations categories,
PRODUCTION
industry, statistical analysis, and product
research. I hope to share my findings
with studios and publishers, as I believe it
could be a useful stepping stone towards
creating a reliable research model
to guide business and development
decisions, which in turn will contribute to
a more sustainable esports ecosystem.