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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."
i rtfa and it didn't explain what these two play types were. at a guess, veterans are players who know exactly how to very quickly kill all NPC's and pacifists prefer to sneak past enemies (presumably looking for story progression more than combat).
i think this could be interesting as it would mean that various branches of game dev could all get an equal input and the player would define which aspects they get into more. obviously their goal is to increase player satisfaction and thereby recommendation sales (which are probably the most important if the impact of p2p downloading on music and video purchases is indicating). i personally HATE puzzles that aren't reasonably simple and present upfront as puzzles. the physics puzzles of hl2 were fine with me but i used walkthroughs on penumbra and tlj games because i am not good at puzzles.
i hadn't played much computer games for years between my late teens and late twenties, and what got me back into it was storyline - half life 2 has such a rich storyline, even if it is inane the acting is so well done. i suppose my early style was 'runner' as i just wanted to advance as quickly as possible to the next story element. then after a while i got to know how to play it better and not many incidents of dying and i started noticing side-tracks and objects and methods i hadn't tried before.
overall i think a more intelligent adaptation of the game would provide a deeper variation than weapon lethality, accuracy and the enemy's converse functions. replaying, for example, one wants ways to advance cutscenes faster, that would be something that a system like that could manage, to choose more curt versions of a dialogue sequence and determine triggers to advance and so forth. making enemies more alert or less alert to your presence in-game too, would require this kind of analysis, this would raise the challenge level for veteran players who would have to increase their response rate and vary tactics against npc's that are prepared sooner and move in more advanced tactical manouvres, varying between a bunch of idiotic disconnected enemies up to enemies that call each other over to attempt to fix and flank you.
one could go on and on. but overall this idea of games adapting play style to suit the player is going to mean more people like playing games, if this leads to a more fluid and individualised game experience this is a good thing because it also means if you want to try a different approach the game world responds differently to you and creates a different experience. it's a break from the ye olde railroad plot pathway and it can only make gaming better.