RZ
Assessing Online Esports Journalism Using Data
As part of my Special Topics in Journalism class at PLNU during my senior year, I decided for my data assessment assignment I would work with data I cared about–
how well did the articles I wrote for my summer internship at DBLTAP perform, and what deductions can be made about online journalism? Esports news websites? Etc.
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I documented all 282 articles I’ve written for DBLTAP as of early December 2017–I am still a freelance contributor who writes articles from time to time–and went to work.
Defining Article Genre
Community: These articles are based on community creations such as fan ideas, cosplay, and especially trendy highlights of players’ gameplay. This tends to be a positive and fun category.
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Esports: These articles range from match predictions, match summaries and team/roster updates regarding the competitive/tournament scene for Overwatch.
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Fluff: I couldn’t think of a better name. These articles are quizzes and ratings of aspects of the game.
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Gameplay: These articles update Overwatch players on the the state of the game, glitches that are found, and incoming changes.
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PR: These articles advertise the success of Overwatch, Blizzard, Overwatch esports, and merchandise.
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Rumor: These articles, which are usually gameplay-related, concern aspects of Overwatch that may change or update but are not totally confirmed. Some are even pure speculation.
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Strategy: These articles advise players on how to better excel in their own Overwatch gameplay, discuss the meta-game, team composition and teamwork, etc.
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Theorycraft: Similar to fluff, these articles are ideas about how the game could be, or ought to be changed/added to.
Personal assessments:
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- While the Community genre of article comprises 25.2% of the articles I’ve written for DBLTAP, it has attracted 39.7% of the page views. Community-focused article content is the most attractive and click-worthy to consumers.
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- While the Esports genre comprises 13.8% of the articles I’ve written for DBLTAP, it has only attracted 2.2% of the page views. This is somewhat shocking given DBLTAP is specifically an esports news website–does this mean the Overwatch community is less esports/competitive-focused than other video game communities, or something else?
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- The Fluff genre of articles comprises 9.2% of the articles I’ve written for DBLTAP, and attracted 4.5% of the page views. Such articles don’t perform terribly, but not very well either.
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- The Gameplay genre of articles comprises 13.1% of the articles I’ve written for DBLTAP, and attracted 16.2% of the page views. It can be deduced that consumers like to stay up to date regarding gameplay changes and discoveries–not surprising.
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- While the Lore genre of articles comprises only 1.8% of the articles I’ve written for DBLTAP, they attracted a relatively impressive 4.4% of the page views. That’s more than double their value–it can be deduced that consumers really love to read up on articles concerning Overwatch’s lore, universe and characters.
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- The PR genre of articles comprises 2.1% of the articles I’ve written for DBLTAP, and they attracted 1% of the page views. Articles regarding the success of Overwatch, new collectibles and merchandise perform pretty badly–the reason why is up to guesswork, but I would assume it’s because potential consumers don’t trust a news source talking about products what with the “paid content” phenomena that’s sweeping all journalism, even the New York Times.
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- The Rumor genre of articles comprises only 2.1% of the articles I’ve written for DBLTAP, yet they attracted 7.8% of the page views. People really want to click this kind article based on the headlines they see.
Side note: Of the 6 Rumor articles, I’ve personally qualified 3 of them as misleading and 3 of them as straightforward. Only 1 of the straightforward articles performed below average in view count, so with only one exception, rumors are something people are interested in clicking on–even when the headline is upfront about it being exactly what it is.
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- The Strategy genre of articles comprises 25.9% of the articles I’ve written for DBLTAP, and they attracted 21.5% of the page views. In general, I noticed that strategy/meta articles perform VERY hot or cold. Some did exceedingly well while others went almost entirely un-clicked. A difficult genre to assess with any measure of consistency.
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- While the Theorycraft genre of articles comprises 6.7% of the articles I’ve written for DBLTAP, they only attracted 2.6% of the page views. We can deduce that people aren’t very interested in reading what me, one gaming journalist, has to think about a certain aspect of their game and how it ought to be or could be changed!
Prediction Success Rate
Of the 282 articles I’ve written for DBLTAP, only 44 of them contain predictions regarding future content, gameplay/balance changes and tournament predictions–15.6% of articles. That means the vast majority of DBLTAP articles are based on facts rather than conjecture, which is admirable. Of course, like sports journalism, with esports journalism there’s a time and a place for conjecture and prediction so long as it’s labelled as such!
38.6% of my predictions ended up being accurate, while the remaining 61.4% were not. Not great, but not horrible either. Hilariously, two of my three Overwatch World Cup match predictions were way off–but I had a riot of a time watching those games, partially because I enjoyed being proven wrong as Sweden whooped the U.K. and France trampled China! Good thing I’m not in the betting business…
How Clickbait-y are Titles?
I also distinguished between the 282 articles how “clickbait-y” I personally believed the headlines of each to be. This is highly subjective, of course, and should be taken with a grain of salt. I separated them into three categories:
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Straightforward: Such headlines are 100% honest about what the article contains and concerns.
Clickbait: Such headlines aren’t dishonest per se, but they do hide a key element that could easily be included in the title.
Misleading: Such headlines can easily deceive consumers into thinking something that’s not true if they don't go on to read the full story. For example, "Blizzard Considering New Lúcio Skin," when in fact all the game designer stated was "maybe we'll consider making it a skin someday."
- With 76.6% of articles being straightforward–quite admirable for a website that stays thriving via influencers–they accounted for 70.2% of views, which is solid. News consumers are not nearly as dumb as the world sometimes bemoans.
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- Meanwhile, clickbait-y articles accounted for 14.2% of headlines. They accounted for 11.2% of views. Hiding certain key phrases from the headline in the attempt to attract clicks works decently, but not amazingly either.
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- While downright misleading headlines accounted for only 9.2% of article titles, they attracted a whopping 18.6% of page views! We can assess that misleading headlines are the most effective way to get page views, at least in the cases where they were implemented.
On a personal note, with every article type I made sure to be as honest as possible in my elaborations to clear up any potential confusion based on the headline alone. But in all honesty, I contributed plenty of misleading headlines.
Closing Statements
While it would be erroneous to carry these statistics and analyses over to all other forms of web journalism, this particular case study does shed some light on how web journalism operates, and how well esports is doing. While the mainstream press still enjoys running the lazy evergreen of "are esports truly a sport?", esports news sites are finding inventive ways of thriving in an increasingly competitive environment.
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The easy answer to this question is "through clickbait," but that's clearly an oversimplification. Across only four months, the articles I wrote for DBLTAP pertaining to Overwatch garnered some 1.4 million views, and the genres were varied. We ran relatively few sensationalist headlines, and even those we did weren't particularly egregious–in my view, anyway.
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No, the best way to get clicks was to run exciting and interesting gameplay clips and fan creations by the Overwatch community. That genre alone granted almost 600,00 views, which is incredible.
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It is my hope and goal with this data aggregation to impart some of my discoveries to the journalism and esports communities as a whole.