“I Am Surrounded!”: Decision-Making Processes Associated With Spatiotemporal Patterns and Teammates’ Communication in a National Esports Championship

This case study explored the influence of opponents’ spatial density and teammates’ communications on decision-making in a competitive gaming setting (i.e., League of Legends) using a mixed method. In-game behavior recordings complemented by verbal data from 15 post-game video-cued recall interviews were collected from five expert players during three French national Esport championship games. Using the Recognition-Primed Decision model, 243 decisions were classified into three types of recognition processes, and 70 decisions were observed to be influenced by teammate communication. Two distinct spatiotemporal game patterns emerged from data analysis. Decision processes seem to be affected by opponents’ spatial density and exhibit similarities to those observed in traditional team sports’ contexts, regardless of the level of time pressure involved. During higher spatial density phases, influenced decisions predominantly rely on sole reactions to explicit communication. Conversely, communications are mostly used as an auxiliary source of information in low spatial density phases. A quantitative increase in the cognitive package verbalization during confrontation phases introduces a potential paradox. Unlike traditional models suggesting a reduction in information quantity processed under pressure, high environmental monitoring and dense internal processing was observed, suggesting a complex micro-cognitive adaptation to manage increased proximal stimuli.