Sunny Thaicharoen

Queen Mary University of London

Sunny is a passionate esports enthusiast, with a love of MOBA games. His background is in engineering and entrepreneurship, with a Master of Technology Entrepreneurship degree from University College London. He is the creator of YGOscope, a statistical game data platform for a competitive card game, Yu-Gi-Oh. Sunny is an avid player of competitive Dota in his spare time, and is also a keen theme park enthusiast. He is interested in modelling metagames of MOBAs through game data and player research, particularly how players adopt the most effective strategies when changes to the stable gameplay state occurs.

A description of Sunny's research:

The project focuses on how the META - most effective tactics available - of MOBA games shift during disruption (usually through gameplay updates) between states of ignorance and stability within the player space of these games, to deepen our understanding of how players adapt to the changes that these gameplay updates cause, and why. There is a large degree of variability of how new METAs develops, and currently there is little research on the meta and metagame front. Available research so far has been based on defining the phenomena and resulting effects of gameplay updates, but little modelling has been done to attempt bring these fragmented pieces of knowledge together and attempt to structure them. The study and structuring of this phenomena can be an ideal starting point in understanding how effective strategies develop not only in MOBAs or video games, but any other competitive games such as chess, trading card games or sports.