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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."
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.
Yep, I've noticed this too. I dont get why, but some people tend to stare the ass more, while personally I like to enjoy the boobs.
Did this research notice if there were any deaths caused by getting discracted when you jumped and the camera got into such position that you tried to get a nippleslip or see the panties?
After seeing how Tivo and Netflix recommendations go sometimes, I'm not sure I want a game changing itself because it thinks I know what I want. Not to knock Tivo or Netflix, they are accurate alot, but sometimes they are way off base.
Besides, if it knew what I really wanted, everything would just end up having tits.
"I don't have to think. I only have to do it. The results are always perfect, but that's old news." - Meat Puppets
Whenever you play a game of Tomb Raider: Underworld, heaps of data about your playing style is collected at Eidos' servers.
Thanks for the heads up, so I won't buy it. I personally don't like having everything I do monitored in some way on some server with a shady privacy policy.
How about the naked Lara Croft modders? Which slot do they fall into?
...15 years ago. They change the names and claim it as unique research?
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Many players enjoy some variety within a game. I've played all the Hitman games with the aim of completing the missions "cleanly", so I enjoyed the ones which force you to play the last mission as more of a shooter game (they did this in the 1st, 2nd and 4th games, while the third had a finale which offed the chance to play stealthily, but was still designed to produce a massive firefight if not played stealthily).
I would be somewhat annoyed if Eidos based the style of the final level of the next Hitman game on stats from the rest of the game, which seems to be a real possibility since Hitman is a game which offers plenty of chances to choose between stealth and action gameplay.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
In case anyone else was trying to figure out these roles... (page 6 last two paragraphs - > page 7)
Veterans = The power gamers, deaths usually only environmental.
Solvers = Die often (mainly from falling), methodical, slow.
Pacifists = Cannon fodder basically.
Runners = They run, they die, they run. The first thing that comes to mind here is a player that goes for the flag immediately in CTF.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
The categories did not exist prior to the data; they were found by unsupervised learning algorithms in the data.
The system discovers the categories. The analysis finds groupings of players who behave in similar ways through the game, and the researchers named those after-the-fact. There's no a priori reason why the players should group at all, though - the study could've equally found that only a small percentage of players clustered and the majority were radically different from each other.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
There is a sword in the middle of the room, what would you like to do?
"Leave sword"
-Enemies Removed from all rooms-
-Puzzles added to all rooms-
You enter a room with a puzzle, what would you like to do?
"I hate puzzles!"
-Puzzles removed from all rooms-
-You Win! You are the new moon master!-
This is them having faith in their designers. The designers are saying that they want the game to be the best for everyone and that if we can learn how people play we can get more people to like the game.
Sweet Zombie Jesus, the tin foil hat brigade are out in force today. The game is already awarding you Achievements as you play. You don't like being "spied" on to earn Achievements? Then why are you playing on XBox Live?
Oh, you didn't realize that this only applies to the XBox Live version? You didn't even read the article, you say? I've just earned the "Shocked and Stunned" Achievement.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
...but how does it track when my 8-year-old daughter loads the disk and plays "Lara Croft: Monkey Chaser" ? I'm guessing they need a way to throw out that data, or else risk creating the new, bogus, player category of "Spastic Insomniac."
Could you imagine The Last Starfighter in this day and age? "We've been monitoring your progress in this thing you call a 'game', and we believe you may have what it takes to defend the galaxy!" "OMG Spyware! Screw you guys!"
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."
Awesome! In my case, I think it would be hilarious to watch Tomb Raider slowly morph into Starcraft.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
It's already been done for EVE Online. They found two groups:
1) Pirates; who spend 90% of their playtime being awesome at gatecamps.
2) Carebear Gayfags.
Valve does this as well. It creates some pretty interesting data, like the maps of where people die the most. It's easy to see how it can help designers.
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.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
most people who use 1984 as a knee-jerk reaction to anything they deem questionable haven't even read that book either.
(No, this is NOT about cybering...)
I want to enjoy MMOs. I really do. But somehow I always wind up on the team with Leeroy @#$% Jenkins.
Someone REALLY needs to add this technology to an MMO -- and then help players to form groups with other people who have the same play style. Let Leeroy and his team of Runners go and have their fun. I'll hang out with some Puzzle-Solvers or Explorers or People Who Actually Read The Quest Dialog or whatever bucket is appropriate for the way I play the particular game. I need help joining the right pick-up group or guild or whatever (if I had social skills, I'd be outside) and an LFG Chat Channel isn't really enough.
THAT would be a customized game experience worth some money ($15/month to whoever could implement it).
-- 77IM
Student: Is it true that the foundation of the universe is paradox?
Master: Well, yes and no.