Understanding Individual Play Sequences Using Growing Self Organizing Maps

Abstract

When interacting with computer games, a player would derive a strategy to conquer the game using his/her experience, observations etc. During game play, the players adapt their strategy to better suit the challenges posed by the game. With time, these strategies would formulate to a pattern of interaction for an individual player with respect to myriad of game entities such as on handling of artificial opponents, movement strategies and decision making. Understanding these patterns would provide valuable insight about a player’s approach toward defeating the game which could be exploited to enhance the level of challenge posed by game AI. This paper attempts to identify dominant game play sequences made by an individual player by interpreting the positioning of the clusters in a growing self-organizing map (GSOM) generated using play data collected from the same player. Results indicate that dominant play sequences could indeed be identified but requires further analysis before a solid claim in this regard could be made.