User:Jcp110/Brawlhalla

Community Representation
One factor that is critical to the longevity of a game is whether the players feel that their opinions are being heard by the developers. One way for a developer to demonstrate that they are listening to their community is through frequent updates that tailor the game to the needs of the community and maintain a playable state. A study that focused on 'urgent updates', which are defined as updates that, "... are deemed critical enough to not be left unreleased until an upcoming regular-cycle update," found that for Steam's top games, including Brawlhalla, 39% of these 'urgent updates' were to fix crashes, and 25% made changes to the games' rules. It is important for developers to maintain a playable state in their game, so preventing crashes is very important, as well as updating game rules to better suit the player base. The developer of Brawlhalla, Blue Mammoth Games, frequently uses the community's feedback to make changes to their game. It was especially common earlier in the development of the game for there to be a section included in the patch notes titled 'Community Requests'. In this section, various changes are listed which are derived from feedback from the community, one such change was made to the dodge mechanic in the game. The change made it harder to dodge away from thrown weapons, encouraging more precise gameplay and making the weapon throw mechanic more viable. This was an issue that allowed players to avoid attacks that should have hit them, which could be abused to make for a less than ideal gameplay experience for the players. The community brought this to the attention of the developers, who quickly implemented a change that made the game more reflective of the ideals of their players. This is a great example of why Brawlhalla's player base has continually grown, because the game has been consistently developed with the players in mind.

As a Scientific Tool
Brawlhalla has been used in multiple scientific studies to research various ways that humans interact with competitive games. One such study used Brawlhalla to study the effects that a stressful competitive situation has on the players' ability to perform. The study focused on measuring players' attentional control and reinvestment levels, and revealed that neither a player's attentional control or reinvestment levels were able to accurately predict their performance in ranked matches Both low attentional control and high reinvestment have previously been shown to negatively affect performance in independent settings, but this study focused on the interaction between the two factors, which led to rather inconclusive evidence. One interesting finding is that there were players who perform at a high level yet also have high worry, researchers hypothesized that they able to do so because their reinvestment was low enough that it allowed them allocate more of their attention to worrying. Essentially, some players might be so good that they no longer need to consciously focus on playing, and can instead focus on other things, like their performance.

A different study used Brawlhalla to try to better understand the way that the public view of video games affects which companies choose to sponsor esports events. This study was focused on fans of the top 100 most viewed Esports games, which includes Brawlhalla. The participants were asked a variety of questions, including questions like “Do you think society still has a negative perception of video games?” The study was able to conclude that over 95% of the participants felt that society has some negative views regarding video games, and that 56.2% of the surveyed population felt that they had to hide their interest in competitive games in one way or another. The researchers were then able to use this data to conclude that prospective companies should be careful when sponsoring esports events, as the public is still not fully supportive of them, and doing so could damage their reputation.