What Makes a Champion: The Behavioral and Neural Correlates of Expertise in Multiplayer Online Battle Arena Games

Despite the popularity of multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games, academic research on MOBA is still very limited. The current study aimed to fill this gap by exploring the behavioral and neural correlates of expertise for the most popular MOBA game, League of Legends (LOL). Three groups of LOL players with different expertise levels were recruited, including professional players, background-matched trainees, and age-matched students with no systematic LOL trainings. A series of behavioral tests and questionnaires was used to evaluate their general cognitive skills and their LOL-specific abilities were extracted from the neural activities (Electroencephalographs (EEG)s and Electrocardiographs (ECG)s) recorded during LOL matches. Using the behavioral features, both the students and the trainees could be significantly separated from the professional players (trainees vs. professional players, 61.11%; students vs. professional players, 66.67%), whereas the students and the trainees cannot be distinguished. Using the neural features, all three groups could be well separated with higher classification accuracies (students vs. trainees: 88.24%; trainees vs. professional players, 93.33%; students vs. professional players, 93.75%). The most contributing behavioral and neural indices were revealed as well, including multiple-object tracking capability, mental concentration, visuospatial attention ability, etc. The authors' results for the first time showed the possibility of recognizing MOBA expertise using both behavioral and neural measurements and provided a framework for evaluation, selection, and training of professional MOBA players.