Predicting player behavior in Tomb Raider : Underworld

This paper presents the results of an explorative study on predicting aspects of playing behavior for the major commercial title Tomb Raider: Underworld (TRU). Various supervised learning algorithms are trained on a large-scale set of in-game player behavior data, to predict when a player will stop playing the TRU game and, if the player completes the game, how long will it take to do so. Results reveal that linear regression models and other non-linear classification techniques perform well on the tasks and that decision tree learning induces small yet well-performing and informative trees. Moderate performance is achieved from the prediction models, which indicates the complexity of predicting player behavior based on a constrained set of gameplay metrics and the noise existent in the dataset examined, a generic problem in large-scale data collection from millions of remote clients.peer-reviewe

The Interplay between Real Money Trade and Narrative Structure in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games

A narrative structure is one of the main components to constitute the genre of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs). Meanwhile Real Money Trade (RMT) enables a player to adjust an ex post level of challenge by skipping the narrative structure of a game. However, RMT may concurrently disturb a player who enjoys game following the narrative structure hierarchically. In pursuance of developing the knowledge about the relationship between RMT and the usage of MMORPG, we investigate the role of the strictness of predetermined narrative structure. We present the dual structure of societies to describe a player that arbitrarily decides to reside in a virtual society. Then we adopt the social nominalism to explain how individual motif of playing a game is expanded to the nature of game. Finally, we argue that a game with weakly predetermined narrative structure is more positively associated with RMT volume, since these games arouse a player’s sentiment of fun by relying more on their socially oriented motivation. With empirical evidence from the Korean MMORPGs market, we proved the hypothesis

Um framework de MMORPG : desenvolvimento orientado pela arquitetura

Monografia (graduação)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade UnB Gama, Curso de Engenharia de Software, 2013.Os MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) são jogos de computadores que suportam centenas ou milhares de jogadores simultaneamente que controlam um ou mais personagens, interagindo com o ambiente do jogo, completando missões, manipulando objetos do mundo virtual, conversando com outros personagens e combatendo monstros. Este gênero possui a sua jogabilidade como fator crítico para o sucesso, que é significativamente influenciada pela performance dos servidores. Os MMORPGs têm aumentado a sua expressão no mercado de jogos nos últimos anos, entretanto observa-se uma lacuna ferramental que favoreça o reúso no momento da implementação de jogos dessa natureza. Por meio do estudo dos problemas enfrentados no desenvolvimento de novos jogos MMORPGs e do levantamento de requisitos para este tipo de sistema, este trabalho de conclusão de curso apresenta uma proposta de um framework que implementa características essenciais de uma arquitetura de software voltada para MMORPG, com o intuito atenuar essa lacuna. ___________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACTThe MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) are computer games that supports hundreds or thousands of concurrent players con- trolling one or more characters, interacting with the game environment, completing missions, manipulating objects in the virtual world, talking with other players and fighting monsters. This genre has the gameplay as a critical factor for the success, which is significantly influenced by the performance of the servers. MMORPGs have increased its expression in the gaming market in recent years, however, there is a gap tooling that promotes reuse at the time of implementation of such games. Through the study of the problems faced in developing new games of MMORPGs and gathering requirements for this type of system, this work presents a proposal for a framework that implements the essential features of a software architecture oriented to MMORPG in order to mitigate this gap

온라인 게임에서 유저의 행태에 관한 연구

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 경영대학 경영학과, 2018. 2. 유병준.This dissertation consists of two essays on user behavior in online games. In the first essay, I identified multi-botting cheaters and measured their impacts using basic information in database such as user ID, playtime and item purchase record. I addressed the data availability issue and proposed a method for companies with limited data and resources. I also avoided large-scale transaction processing or complex development, which are fairly common in existing cheating detection methods. With respect to identifying cheaters, we used algorithms named DTW (Dynamic Time Warping) and JWD (Jaro–Winkler distance). I also measured the effects of using hacking tool by employing DID (Difference in Differences). My analysis results show some counter-intuitive results. Overall, cheaters constitute a minute part of users in terms of numbers – only about 0.25%. However, they hold approximately 12% of revenue. Furthermore, the usage of hacking tools causes a 102% and 79% increase in playtime and purchase respectively right after users start to use hacking tools. According to additional analysis, it could be shown that the positive effects of hacking tools are not just short-term. My granger causality test also reveals that cheating users activity does not affect other users' purchases or playtime trend. In the second essay, I propose a methodology to deal with churn prediction that meets two major purposes in the mobile casual game context. First, reducing the cost of data preparation, which is growing its importance in the big-data environment. Second, coming up with an algorithm that shows favorable performance comparable to that of the state-of-the-art. As a result, we succeed in greatly lowering the cost of the data preparation process by employing the sequence structure of the log data as it is. In addition, our sequence classification model based on CNN-LSTM shows superior results compared to the models of previous studies.Essay 1. Is Cheating Always Bad? A study of cheating identification and measurement of the effect 1 1. Introduction 2 2. Literature Review 8 3. Data 16 4. Hypotheses 17 5. Methodology 20 5.1 Cheating Identification 20 5.2 Measurement of Cheating Tool Usage Effect 28 6. Result 33 6.1 Cheating Identification 33 6.2 Measurement of Cheating Tool Usage Effect 33 7. Additional Analysis 35 7.1 Lifespan of Cheating Users 35 7.2 Granger Causality Test 36 8. Discussion and Conclusion 37 9. References 48 Essay 2. Churn Prediction in Mobile Casual Game: A Deep Sequence Classification Approach 61 1. Introduction 62 2. Definition of Churn 64 3. Related Works 65 4. Data 66 5. Methodology 66 5.1 Data Preparation 66 5.2 Prediction Model 71 6. Result and Discussion 74 7. References 77Docto

Selected Computing Research Papers Volume 2 June 2013

An Evaluation of Current Innovations for Solving Hard Disk Drive Vibration Problems (Isiaq Adeola) ........................................................................................................ 1 A Critical Evaluation of the Current User Interface Systems Used By the Blind and Visually Impaired (Amneet Ahluwalia) ................................................................................ 7 Current Research Aimed At Improving Bot Detection In Massive Multiplayer Online Games (Jamie Burnip) ........................................................................................................ 13 Evaluation Of Methods For Improving Network Security Against SIP Based DoS Attacks On VoIP Network Infrastructures (David Carney) ................................................ 21 An Evaluation of Current Database Encryption Security Research (Ohale Chidiebere) .... 29 A Critical Appreciation of Current SQL Injection Detection Methods (Lee David Glynn) .............................................................................................................. 37 An Analysis of Current Research into Music Piracy Prevention (Steven Hodgson) .......... 43 Real Time On-line Analytical Processing: Applicability Of Parallel Processing Techniques (Kushatha Kelebeng) ....................................................................................... 49 Evaluating Authentication And Authorisation Method Implementations To Create A More Secure System Within Cloud Computing Technologies (Josh Mallery) ................... 55 A Detailed Analysis Of Current Computing Research Aimed At Improving Facial Recognition Systems (Gary Adam Morrissey) ................................................................... 61 A Critical Analysis Of Current Research Into Stock Market Forecasting Using Artificial Neural Networks (Chris Olsen) ........................................................................... 69 Evaluation of User Authentication Schemes (Sukhdev Singh) .......................................... 77 An Evaluation of Biometric Security Methods for Use on Mobile Devices (Joe van de Bilt) .................................................................................................................. 8