In the Philippines, mobile games are no stranger to the youth, as these types of games are one of the most accessible kinds of games as they can be played on a mobile phone. Filipinos may not always have access to a full computer or even a console, but it is relatively easy to say that most Filipinos have access to at least a mobile phone.
In that regard, mobile games always take the country by storm. Capstone-Intel Corporation looks into the Filipino’s perspective on the game entitled Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.
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Technologies, tools, and methods to convert data and information into breakthrough insights and actionable intelligence outputs. It is committed to helping its clients solve problems, find solutions, grow markets and constituencies, build reputations, navigate risks, manage crises, and be the country’s leading private research and intelligence agency.
Background
In 2016, game developer Moonton produced and released their 5 versus 5 team multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game to the public. This game is called Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, more colloquially known as “ML” (pronounced as Em-El).
Over the years, the ML community and playerbase have grown and eventually reached the status of having an esports community built around them. It was even included in the 2019 Southeast Asian Games.
However, ML has also received criticism and infrigement cases due to its similarities to the more popular game that preceded it, League of Legends by Riot Games.
Methodology
From November 28, 2022 to November 28, 2023, Capstone-Intel utilized its social listening tools in order to scan publicly available Facebook accounts for their posts that mention “Mobile Legends”. It should be noted that there were no specific demographics or personal data that were tracked.
Facebook performance
Capstone-Intel Corporation’s social listening tool scanned through Facebook in order to garner posts that are about Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, or at the very least make mention of the event. The results indicate that there were 13,850 posts in total. Among these posts are 11,443,653 total comments, 1,741,824 total shares, and a reaction count of 13,703,152.
This consolidated into a total engagement score of 4,256,594.5.
Dominant reaction, top stories
The top story that involved Mobile Legends was a mention on the Facebook page of Kami.com.ph, where the caption involved a public figure commenting on another’s couple picture. This post garnered 18,982 (2.9 percent) Like reactions, 5,737 (0.9 percent) Love reactions, 638,654 (96.2 percent) Haha reactions, 377 (0.1 percent) Wow reactions, 206 (0.1 percent) Sad reactions, and 42 Angry reactions. This led to an engagement score of 70,795.1
The second story is one that was posted on an influencer’s Facebook page, wherein he was thanking his friends, and one of them in particular was praised for being a good Mobile Legends player. This post garnered 48,368 (13.8 percent) Like reactions, 300,309 (85.5 percent) Love reaction, 568 (0.2 percent) Haha reactions, 155 Wow reactions, 543 (0.2 percent) Sad reactions, and 9 Angry reactions. The engagement score for this post yielded 57,004.8
Finally, the third top story comes from Filipino news company TV5, in which they posted a Facebook graphic sharing a moment from one of their shows, Face2Face, where the game was mentioned. This was able to garner 856 (0.9 percent) Like reactions, 72 (0.1 percent) Love reactions, 94,759 (98.9 percent) Haha reactions, 64 (0.1 percent) Wow reactions, 10 Sad reactions, and 1 Angry reaction. This yielded an engagement score of 40,253.5.
