Riot Teams Up With MIT To Investigate.. Uh.. Teams

Riot are teaming up with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as part of their research into player behaviour and teamwork. This time they're looking to explore "the ability of a team to perform a wide range of collaborative tasks" and want your help.

Posting on the League of Legends forums, Jeffrey Lin (lead designer of social systems) explained a little more about what will be involved in the online study and to seek out participants.

To be eligible to take part you'll need to be part of a ranked 5s team (3s aren't being considered at this point but there's scope for that to change in the future) and have played 20 games or more together on the North American server. The post says the games should be from this season but Lin has since clarified that they can span multiple seasons as long as the five has played them as a unit.

Participants will need to complete a 20 minute-ish online screening survey before going on to the main study. The exact details are being kept deliberately vague – you don't want to let teams research the tasks or prepare beforehand – but the tasks will be a series of puzzles and exercises, all in English at the moment, that take about an hour.

On completion the team will get a scorecard showing its collective ability in terms of decision-making, execution, sensing and memory, and a reward on each member's main summoner account.

As for what actually happens with the data, MIT will be working on a paper so the data (in summary form, so not personally identifiable) and results will eventually be made public. Presumably Riot will incorporate any useful findings into their own systems or potentially use them as part of their anti-toxic community drives.

If you're curious there's a signup sheet where you can register your interest.