We are researchers at the Cognitive Science Lab (Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada) and are conducting a large-scale study on the development of expertise in StarCraft 2. We believe that the analysis of StarCraft 2 performance has the potential to be very valuable to researchers studying attention, learning, and cognition. Our initial project involves using replay files and survey questions to characterize differences across all skill levels, from bronze to professional. With the community’s support, it will likely be the largest expertise study ever conducted and may eventually generate positive press coverage for e-Sports and the SC2 community.

Our biggest challenge at this point will be to get a wide variety of players to participate, and to get a lot of them. The size of the study will be one of the big selling points with the academic community so more is definitely better. There are 2 simple ways you can help.

1. Complete the survey, and upload a replay file yourself.
2. Encourage players you know to participate, especially newer players who might not be active in the online community.

If we can get 20,000 players across the full range of skill levels to participate, it will be, by several orders of magnitude, the largest expertise study ever conducted in any domain; bigger than any study on traditional games such as chess, or any sport expertise studies.

We hope that you find our project as exciting and interesting as we do. Your willingness to participate and promote our project is much appreciated.

Please visit http://skillcraft.ca to participate and to get further information.