Visual Analysis of FPS Gameplay Data: From Game Design to Player Behavior

Abstract

Gameplay data analysis has already become an important method for analyzing player behavior in games. Visualization is a promising way to explore and gain insight into the data. In this paper, we work closely with the game designers and user experience engineers to develop a visual analytic system to help them explore the gameplay data for a novel FPS (First-Person Shooter) game specific in the mainland China. We first come up with task specifications for such a system. After that, we propose a set of design goals for our system. VisFPS, is thus developed iteratively through a complete use-centered design process. The system is divided into two parts: Macro-View to deal with the overall gameplay data to discover patterns, and Micro-View to focus on a specific game match to recreate the game scene and use it to study player behavior and verify the game design intent.