Choosing a Side: How do Players Pick a Game when Entering the MOBA Genre?

Despite their immense popularity in the gaming industry, Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) games are notorious for creating a divide among gamers, with their millions of daily players often deciding to play only one game in the genre - a trait which is certainly uncommon in comparison to other genres. Through the use of semi-structured interviews with players from four different MOBAs, this paper explores not only the features present in MOBA games which encourage players to pick them up, but also the often subtle differences in community, mechanics, and psychology between games within the genre, all of which play a significant part in both enticing new players, and forcing them to transition to another game early on in the process.