Talk: Kim-Adeline Miguel - Decoding bias and narrative in competitive video games

Presented by: Kim-Adeline Miguel With video game competitions (also known as eSports) being broadcast on online streams and regular TV stations, in-game video producers have to balance between making the game accessible to casual viewers, and packing enough action on screen to keep regular players interested. What they choose to show on screen also define the narratives surrounding the competing teams, building hype around them and setting implicit expectations (for example what character class is shown the most). In this talk we will walk through video analysis of professional Overwatch games to extract data, explore and validate a few hypotheses on what eSports broadcasters think viewers want to see.