Ideas for data storytelling - Idea 1
You
What do you care about? Destiny 2:
- Behind the scenes weapon/armor/ability stats
- Most popular weapons/builds
- Time-to-kill values for player versus player content for weapons
- Damage per second for cooperative content
- What can be gleaned from this data?
What do you know about? I know a little bit about some of the things I listed as what I cared about, but I would like to learn more and be able to show the data in a way that easily and obviously answers the questions.
What decisions do you face?
- What data do I need to collect?
- How do I use that data?
- How will I visualize the data I want to show?
- What is the most important part of my data?
Seven templates
Can you apply the templates to your topics?
1. Geographic Variation Probably not applicable, or there’s no data pertaining to what I want to visualize.
2. Trend related to the news Sometimes popular youtubers make build or weapon reviews, generating hype for the topics they cover, which coul cause a rise in popularity in those specific builds or weapons.
3. Who does that? Show percantages of usage of popular weapon archetypes/specific weapons and figure out why or what makes them stand out above the rest.
4. Answering a question people care about Some of the most asked questions when it comes to weapons in player versus player content are “what does the range stat do” and “is range/handling/stability/etc. important?” Answering them I feel would ease a lot of minds of the more competetive playerbase as well as allow for the creation of a list of the objectively best weapons in the game.
5. Valuable to businesses Maybe Bungie can use the data to help balance player versus player gamemodes, other than that, not really.
6. What’s the most popular? Show a list of the most used weapons in player versus player and cooperative content, and the reasons why those weapons are in those slots.
7. Cost/Money rankings I probably couldn’t do anything with the data pertaining to money specifically, but they say time is money, and some weapons take more time to farm for better versions of those weapons than others, and so an “ease of acquisition” stat could be something I include in my data.
Misconceptions
What misconceptions do people have about your topic? In terms of the range stat question, there’s the misconception about how range itself works, mostly based off of an interview with a developer of the game who was explaining how it worked in the previous title, Destiny, which some still believe applies to Destiny 2.
Examples
What data storytelling example inspires you? I really like watching YouTube videos from people like Datto, Aztecross, Coolguy, and Fallout Plays, where they explain the inner workings of the game, or what’s going on behind the scenes to make the game act the way it does.
Could you do a new hypothesis, for the same question? Yes, considering that most of the videos and posts covering the topic ask and answer specific questions already, I could definitely write up new hypothesis about the question.
Could you do a new question, for the same topic? Probably; for the question about range and whether or not it matters, I could re-phrase the question to something like “for what weapon types does range matter?”
Could you do a new topic, with the same “style”? I could ask the questions I want to ask for a different game with similar mechanics, like figuring out which weapons are the best in games like PAYDAY 2 or Path of Exile, the latter of which has many hardcore players who participate in speedruns and races to beat the game as fast as possible.
Data
Where could you search for data about your topic?
- Bungie’s (the developer) own APIs
- Websites like light.gg or destinytracker.com
Ideas for data storytelling - Idea 2
You
What do you care about? Gaming trends over time and how that’s influenced triple-A developers. Predicting future hit games or genres.
What do you know about? There are some games that, when they became popular with a huge portion of the gaming population, influenced professional game development studios to make triple-A games of that particular genre, or include various aspects of the influential game’s mechanics.
What decisions do you face? What do I decide is a “trend setting” game, and how do I prove that in some way?
Seven templates
Can you apply the templates to your topics?
1. Geographic Variation Do certain regions/countries have different “trend setting” games? Are there certain regions/countries that affect the global market moreso than others? Where is the market?
2. Trend related to the news How does gaming news play a role in the sales of certain games? Is there a correlation or causation?
3. Who does that? What are the main regions that gamers can be sub-divided into?
4. Answering a question people care about What is it, specifically, that makes a game favorable in the eyes of the players?
5. Valuable to businesses What’s the next big hit game/genre/intellectual property?
6. What’s the most popular? What kind of game is the most popular? Why is that?
7. Cost/Money rankings Which game genres are most profitable in what regions?
Misconceptions
What misconceptions do people have about your topic? I can’t think of any off the top of my head. Probably that video games aren’t as profitable as other things.
Examples
What data storytelling example inspires you? Just thinking about all of the popular games that have come out during my lifetime and even before and how they’ve affected the market.
Could you do a new hypothesis, for the same question? Probably something along the lines of “Which games were slated to be influential but didn’t end up becoming influential?”
Could you do a new question, for the same topic? “How were these games influential?”
Could you do a new topic, with the same “style”? Probably not, since I wouldn’t know how to go about doing that.
Data
Where could you search for data about your topic? I’m certain there are a few datasets publicly available that I could get my hands on, I’d have to do more research, though