by JR Cook - 9 years ago     show comments

PVP Live’s HPL has been notorious for its inclusion of advanced stats to Hearthstone. Stats such as Damage Done to Enemy Hero, Minions Killed per Game, and the now infamous Blowback. These stats have been a strong point of contention, with a vocal part of the audience questioning the validity or purpose of these stats. Do these stats hold important meaning, or are they just a senseless gimmick? If you know me and my work, you know that I’m not the kind of guy to leave that kind of question unanswered. Normally, I’d theorycraft my way into the truth, but this time I’m going to try something different. To crack the mystery of HPL stats, I’m going to recruit somebody to help me clear the air. Please welcome Jesse “Kierisi” Mostipak, Director of Data Science at PVP Live.

DR23: Well Met! Glad to get the chance to talk to you.

JM: Thank you, it’s great to have a chance to talk Hearthstone stats with BlizzPro!

DR23: So first things first, Hearthstone is well-known for being a very casual friendly game. The idea of advanced stats seems like something that would be a better fit for a eSport discipline with a more “Hardcore” fanbase. Where does the idea of applying advanced statistics to Hearthstone come from?

JM: When we look at eSports, we see that the majority of titles have a statistical component to them that can be used to provide an additional way of viewing the game. With Hearthstone being a new and growing eSport, the statistics for the title hadn’t really been developed, and we saw this as an opportunity to provide something new for the community.

DR23: Can you tell us more about the Data Science team over at PVP Live? The kind of stats that you track, and the analysis do from them seems like something that takes a lot of work. Can you shed some light on the Data Collection Process? How Many People are needed for PVP Live to keep track of everything?

JM: Our Data Science team has grown quite a bit in the last few months. We’re currently up to four people in-house, and we have a network of over 30 people working remotely to assist with data collection. Our in-house team focuses largely on statistical analysis and data visualization, while our remote team is focused primarily on getting data into our system. Because of the combined efforts of all of these people, we’ve been able to create a robust database that has a wealth of statistics from almost every professional Hearthstone game played to date.

DR23: That seems like a handful, and that’s just collecting the stats. But what happens next? What’s the process of analyzing the data? And more importantly, can you tell everyone what are these stats telling us?

JM: Once we get the statistics in our database there are a couple of directions we can go, and that largely depends on what projects we’re currently focused on. For example, it’s not uncommon for our Account Specialists to be mining the data for insights, running statistical analyses to fine-tune our ranking systems, and running various simulations. With HPL in particular we’re constantly evaluating and analyzing players in order to get insights into their playstyle, which we then share with Nathan, Tannon, and our production team.

DR23: While some player are excited to see what the advanced stat analysis will uncover. A very vocal part of the community has lashed out with what I can only describe as “very unkind criticism”. What do you make of this?

JM: One of the things that we really value about the eSports space is that our community doesn’t hesitate to provide feedback, and it’s really important for us as a team to look at what people are saying and to figure out how to best address the needs of our community.

DR23: But not all of the critics are rude and dismissive of your efforts. I’ve also seen some intelligent discussion on the subject and people willing to give constructive criticism, how has the feedback affected the way you look at Hearthstone and its stats.

JM: The constructive criticism has really given our team some insights into what the sticking points are with regards to statistics, and is definitely shaping our plans moving forward. One of the best pieces of feedback we’ve gotten is that there’s a level of detachment with some of our statistics, where our community can see what the stats mean and what’s being described, but the connection between what the stat is saying and why it’s relevant is missing. Coming up with ways to make that connection, between a number describing a player and why it’s relevant, is something that the Data Science team, and PVP Live as a whole, is incredibly passionate about. Some of our first steps have been to incorporate stats-based narratives in HPL, where Nathan and Tannon will talk about a statistic correlating to a player’s win rate. Moving forward we’re working on a couple of projects that will continue to strengthen that connection between stats and their relevance.

We recognize that these statistics are a new concept for many Hearthstone players and we’re committed to demystifying the data and helping everyone become better educated fans and players.

DR23: I understand that the process of extracting stats, figuring out their impact on win-rates, and all the interesting things you can do with them is a rather long process and I’ve seen first hand how with every passing week HPL seems to give us new insight in how the stats affect the game. With that said, what are your short and long term goals on the evolution of Hearthstone stat analysis?

JM: The word evolution is key here, because we definitely see this as a process. Right now we’ve got the systems in place to collect the statistics and share them both on HPL as well as pvplive.net. But this is really only just the beginning! Our short term goals are to continue developing methods to share statistics in ways that help people connect the statistic with why it’s relevant. We’re currently developing data visualizations and infographics, and are excited to begin sharing those with the community.

Looking at the longer term goals, we’re continuing to develop more detailed and interesting metrics, which is something that we’ve gotten a lot of great feedback back from the community on. For example, we’d like to start diving into class-specific statistics as well as archetype-based statistics. We have the data on hand to perform these kinds of analyses, and we’re excited to see what patterns emerge. When we can couple these kinds of analyses with infographics and data visualizations, we’ve got a really powerful method for engaging with the community and sharing in the discussions about Hearthstone statistics.

DR23: I’m really looking forward to that. But lets step out of the statistics of things for a bit, PVP Live sometimes gets a bit of a bad-rep for being “way too serious”, and “trying too hard to be professional”. Personally, I see a bunch of hard working people that are very organized, and more importantly passionate about you do. Can you tell us a bit more about Jesse the person? How long have you been working with PVP Live, and what the impact that the company has had in your life?

JM: Absolutely! When I started with PVP Live, I was fortunate enough to be in a position where I was able to take a few months and determine how to transition to a career that encompassed gaming in some capacity. My background is in scientific research and teaching, and so I was really looking for ways to translate the skills I had developed in applied statistics from both of those fields to video games. Because there isn’t necessarily a direct correlation it was important to me to keep an open mind, which is how I landed a Community Manager position with PVP Live. From there it was a matter of networking within the organization, which eventually resulted in an interview process and being brought on to lead the Data Science team.

DR23: Sounds like a really great place to work at, huh? I really admire the company culture you guys are building. Can you share a little bit more of what makes PVP Live so special and why every member seems to be so excited to be a part of this project?

JM: We were in a meeting the other day, and someone said that working at PVP Live is like coming home. To elaborate on that, for almost all of us video games and eSports have been a hobby that we haven’t necessarily been able to share with other people that we worked with, until we came to PVP Live. So now you’ve got 20 people working together, all of them passionate about eSports, and it’s really created this culture where everyone is pursuing a career in a field that they’re excited about.

And for the fans and players, PVP Live is focused on organizing and live-broadcasting leagues with cutting edge technology, building out a 24/7 news network, providing revolutionary stats, analysis, scores and serving as a single destination for everything eSports.

DR23: Glad to know you guys are enjoying what you do so much! Do you have any closing thoughts you want to share with our audience?

JM: Keep the feedback coming! Hearing from the community about how they’d like to see our statistics evolve, what they’re enjoying and what they still have questions on, all of this is invaluable to how we move forward.

This concludes part 1 of our look at Advanced Stats in Hearthstone. Stay tuned, as the next entry of this two-part series will feature more specific analysis into the stats that PVP Live has been tracking and featuring. Simply put, I couldn’t resist the allure of putting my theorycrafting juices up to this task.

Meanwhile, keep checking back Blizzpro for all the latest HPL Coverage, and everything else Hearthstone related.