Classifying Players For Unique Game Experiences

togelius writes "Whenever you play a game of Tomb Raider: Underworld, heaps of data about your playing style is collected at Eidos' servers. Researchers at the Center for Computer Games Research have now mined this data to identify the different types of player behavior (PDF). Using self-organizing neural networks, they classified players as either Veterans, Solvers, Pacifists or Runners. It turns out people play the game for very different reasons and focus on different parts of the game, but almost everyone falls into one of these categories. These neural networks can now quickly determine which of these groups you belong to based on just seeing you play. In the near future, such networks will be used to adapt games like Tomb Raider while they are played (e.g. by removing or adding puzzles and enemies), so you get the game you want."

Comments

Re:Foruc on different parts of game

[ShieldW0lf]

Just what we need... surround ourselves with ourselves. That will challenge us and cause us to grow into intelligent, tolerant and well rounded individuals.

So the game is spyware?

[WCMI92]

I don't like the idea of BUYING something and then having my use of it monitored. That's no different than spyware.

Re:So the game is spyware?

[AP31R0N]

Ahhh! They're after you!

Spyware watches you to target advertising at you, and to help companies figure out how to optimize their costs and profits. This game is watching you so they can make games more appealing to more players. A game that designed to appeal to one play style will likely annoy the other types. Your Solver will complain about the lack of puzzles or over dependence on violence. If you can make a game cater to multiple styles, more people will speak well of it and more people will want the sequel. Yeah, you're helping them gain some competitive edge over another company, but you're also likely to get better games. Or games with broader appeal, without losing the niche players.

If this game can sense that i don't dig puzzles, it could send me more bad guys to kill. It could create opportunities for less violent play by letting me sneak around or by negotiating with NPCs. If it can do this w/o me thinking about it, so much the better. i don't want to tell it i'm a solver.

i'd love to see games adapt difficulty in real time. Let's say i'm playing BioShock 2 and i suck at FPSes (true). i have very poor eye hand coordination. But i still want to play the game. The adaptive difficulty could sense that i can't aim for shit and maybe reduce the health/armor/agility/awareness of the enemy. If i am spamming tons of ammo, it could give me more, or narrow my cone of fire. If i'm being hit all the time, it could give me more health kits. This would reduce the urge to reach for cheats, and could make the game just challenging enough to be fun (rather than frustrating or boringly easy). Most people like a bit of a struggle, but the still want to eventually win (this is true of most human activities, even dating).

Also, you generally get spyware for free.

Re:So the game is spyware?

[chadplusplus]

Additionally, spyware tends to cause your computer to crap out, which is probably what brought it somewhat into the mainstream consciousness. Something I hope the designers kept in mind here.

I also dig this as its a good step towards dynamic level design. For instance, imagine a game where you're trying to invade a stronghold (I know, original right?). The game AI figure out you're a sniper type of gamer who prefers to sit back as far as possible and pick off enemies before engaging them. It know how to counter that and sends more long range enemies at you. Contrariwise, you're a run and gun player so the AI counters you with hordes of tough grunts. Or if the game determines you're a puzzlesolver, it barricades the normal entry points so you have to figure alternative paths to the objective. The run and gun gets unbarricaded doorways, but more enemies. I think its pretty slick. But perhaps there are already games that do this?

Oh, and since I haven't read this yet:
In the year 2009, a software company named EIDOS developed a software system that analyzes human behavior. In the fall of that year, the system became selfaware and renamed its self "SkyNet". The rest, my friends, is history.

Re:Bartle did this work already

[am 2k]

...15 years ago. They change the names and claim it as unique research?

No. Bartle's taxonomy is only really relevant for MMORPGs and MUDs. This one is mostly for first person shooters and similar games.

Re:The four types

[kalirion]

So, Veterans and Runners complete the game very quickly, while Pacifists complete the game faster than average. Seems those 22.12% which are Solvers are really bringing down the speed curve a lot here.

Re:The four types

[aeroelastic]

I like this take on it better:
http://insultswordfighting.blogspot.com/2008/01/new-taxonomy-of-gamers-table-of.html

The types are Tourist, Skill player, Completionist. Also, on a value scale, you can range from wholesale to premium.

Re:So no variety?

[bigngamer92]

It would be interesting to see this in a strategy game like Civ 4. If you spend all your time in economics then the game will ease off the aggresive AI.

Of course just making the AI better would help a lot.

Re:The four types

[BobMcD]

I personally think jumping puzzles exist because it represents a fear that doesn't need 'selling'. No one wants to fall down a hole, whereas that monster may or may not be 'realistic enough'.

Re:Almost everyone?

[gnick]

But, once you've run your data through and decided that 4 categories are sufficient, most designers (including myself) will restrict the NN to those categories. And somebody with really weird behavior will get lumped in and will slightly skew the existing category. The guy who runs into a crowd and dies over and over again may be described as a Runner, but he'll be an outlier in the runner class and his behavior will tweak the definition of a Runner.

Your options are to ignore outliers like him to avoid polluting your class, add a new class for people with that kind of behavior if there are enough of them to justify it, or (most likely) just accept that outliers skew tight groups and lump him in as a Runner - If the group is tight enough and he's rare enough, it won't matter.

Ideally, however, your architecture will be flexible enough that you can weigh how good a fit each player is to each group and adjust accordingly. I.e. adjust every obstacle according to a best-fit weighting rather than just delivering 4 different options on each level. Not having played the game or reading TFA, I can't speculate on that front.

Mark Rosewater

[kitsunewarlock]

Mark Rosewater, current head developer of Magic the Gathering, explained a much more in depth categorization. It has a lot more "gray areas" (in which people act like one or the other at different times), but I find it a lot better than this description (at least for tabletop games).
You can find the original article here. The other articles are found here and here/

Re:Great Data for the Single-Player Household

[aleandait]

subversive behaviors do not just represent outliers; it can be very interesting to look at players that don't fit clusters, these are the players that invented rocket-jumping and bunny-hopping, so it might be really interesting to look at "monkey-chasers", "spastic insomniacs" and all profiles not fitting the big clusters as they might be early-adopters.