Factors That Drive Online Game Player To Come To Event: Indonesia Games Championship 2018 Case Study
Last week (April 21–22, 2018), an Indonesian provider (Telkomsel) organized mobile games competition, Indonesia Games Championship 2018. I was curious as to why people are willing to come to such event when they can stream the mobile games competition from IGC website, so I created a mini survey to find out why online player would come to an offline event, when they can stream the game online.
In IGC 2018 Day 2, there were 3 stages of games competition: Mobile Legends Stage, DoTA Stage, and Line Get Rich Stage. Aside from the big stages, there were mini stages for arcade (such as Time Crisis) and PS4 games (such as FIFA), also booth from sponsors. Every big stages have screen to show gameplay and players reaction. In my opinion, with three games and a lot of mini games organized in one room, it really boosts the ambience of being in a e-sports competition event. Good job to the organizers.
Background
As for myself, I attended the event (on Day 2) because I was in love with their website design, and was wondering if the offline event would have great design as well. As I found my motivation to attend such event to be uncommon, I was curious as to why people are willing to come to such event when they can stream the mobile games competition from IGC website.
Methodology
I conducted a mini interview with the attendees of the events. The interview lasted around 3–5 minutes for each participants. The interview that I conducted was semi-structured, the list of questions that I already had can be seen down below.
Participants
I didn’t set any particular target for the participants. I did my survey by doing convenience sampling, meaning I walked around and interviewed attendees that looked unoccupied (wasn’t watching any particular competition at that time) and were willing to be interviewed.
List of Questions
- Age of Attendees:
13–17, 18–24, 25–34, 35–44, Other - Gender of Attendees:
Female, Male, Other - Duration From House to Venue:
< 30 minutes, 30–60 minutes, 60–120 minutes, > 120 minutes - What motivate you to come to this event? What do you want to see?
Watching mobile games/ games competition
Meeting your favorite team
Meeting/ hanging out with your friends
Watching music performance
Watching cosplay - What games competition do you come to watch?
Mobile Legend
AoV
DoTA
Line Get Rich
None - Why do you want to watch this game competition?
I play the game, I want to see how pro players playstyle
I want to see my favorite team
I am accompanying my friends/ families to watch the competition
Other - Why do you need to come when you can watch everything via streaming service that IGC provides?
- Are you going to come to similar events?
- What should be in an event to make you feel interested in attending that particular event?
Participant Description
Here are the demographic of my survey participants:
Survey Result
Mostly the motivation for the participants to come to the offline event is to watch e-sports competition. The second biggest motivation is to meet with their friends in the venue. Surprisingly, the participants that I interviewed didn’t come to watch music performance by JKT 48, I hypothesized that a lot of people would come to watch JKT 48.
Out of all the games in the competition, most of the participants come to watch Mobile Legend and DoTA. Two of the participants came to watch AoV, because of a misinformation they received from IGC’s social media, because on day 2 there’s no AoV competition. From the participants, there are 3 participants that watched both Mobile Legend and DoTA.
Mostly the motivation to watch the competition is because they play the game and want to watch how pro players play. Everyone that come to watch the competition claimed that the reason they’re coming to the event is because of the ambience that they cannot feel from watching online.
Most participants also watch the competition to meet their favorite team. There are equal number of female and male participants that watch the competition to meet pro players. However when I was onsite, I see more female audience gathered around the team to ask for photograph and autograph from the team competing in the competition.
Out of all participants, two are not willing to come to similar events. These two participants actually came to the event to accompany their friends who were enthusiastic to watch the competition. The reason why they wouldn’t come to similar event is because they don’t play the game, and therefore don’t find enjoyment in coming to such event.
For the rest of them, they would want to come to similar event because their favorite team is playing. Out of all participants, but the two that did not play such game, can mention their favorite e-sports team. The team that they mentioned were top teams in Indonesia, Evos and RRQ.
Secondly, they are hoping to get great experience in watching competition, such as big screen, great sound system (no leak from other competition), and sufficient seats for audiences. Convenient time, Saturday and Sunday, and convenient place (air conditioned and spacious rooms, easily accessable by public transportation, and there are food and beveages nearby) are also a factor that they deemed important.
Conclusion
- Online game player would come to offline event to watch e-sports competition to feel the ambience of watching it live. Friends or family members are also a big factor to motivate online game player to come to offline event.
- Offline game player would watch the competition to learn more about playstle of pro players and to meet their favorite team.
- Offline game player would come to an event that can offer great experience in watching competition, that are attended by their favorite teams and KOL, and an event that’s hosted in convenient places at convenient time.
That’s pretty much everything about the mini survey that I conducted. Feel free to give any suggestions, be it a better set of questions, data visualization, or any critics at all.
Website Design that made me fall in love:
Thank you for reading!
