Enhancing Team Cohesion Through a Custom MOBA Game: Development, Implementation & Impact

This paper presents the development and evaluation of UBMG (Untitled Belbin MOBA Game), a simplified multiplayer online battle arena designed to strengthen team cohesion. Its central thesis is that MOBAs, which require coordinated play rather than optional teamwork, can serve as a practical model for improving work-team dynamics. UBMG maps five fixed character roles (Healer, Flyer, Marksman, Bruiser, and Jungler) onto Belbin team roles and emphasizes voice communication and shared objectives over individual mechanical skill. The authors situate the work against a notable gap in Slovak workplaces, where only 30 percent of employers use gamified adaptation systems despite recognizing their benefits.

The empirical core of the study involved 124 valid first-year university students divided into experimental and control groups. Following play of the Belbin-based MOBA, the experimental group showed significant improvements in task cohesion, three dimensions of social inclusion, and four dimensions of achievement motivation: confidence in success, flexibility, internality, and competitiveness. The authors conclude that gamified, role-based MOBA play can meaningfully enhance team dynamics.

These findings carry clear limitations. They rely on self-reported measures, and the persistence of effects over time as well as their generalizability to other populations, industries, and settings remain untested. The study is a case study of a 2022–2023 research project conducted with a student sample in Slovakia, and its scope is accordingly narrow in both geography and demographic composition. The work was supported by Slovakia's VEGA grant agency (project No. 1/0038/22), which frames it within broader research on competitive digital games and social adaptation in Generation Z.