Activity - Game Invaders: The Theory and Understanding of Computer Games - page 79

Table 3.4 Section of the Excel Spreadsheet

of games with confronting as a high activity was eight and therefore the activity
group confronting has a high level of importance 72% of the time in the action
adventure genre (seen highlighted in column Q). This also means that the most
common level of importance for the confronting AG in the action adventure genre
is high (seen in row 2, column T). The same process was carried out for all of the
activity groups for each genre, with the result being individual genre activity group
profi les.

(6) Compare Each Genre's Common Profi le

To measure the closeness of the relationship between each genre, each genre' s
activity group profi le (selecting only the activity groups seen in at least one third of
the games per genre) was pitted against the others' to see where there was some
similarity.
Valuing this similarity involves scoring a full, half, and activity group (AG)
match based on level of importance:

• Full match = 3 (e.g., H and H)

• Half match = 2 (e.g., L/M and M)

• AG match = 1 (e.g., L and H)

The fi nal score values how closely the genres are related: the higher the resulting
score, then the closer the relationship between the genres.

(7) Finish with a Matrix of Genre Relationships

The end result is the matrix of genres against genres shown in Table 3.5. The lower
numbers signify less of a match with other game genres and two stand out more so
than others.
The adventure genre shares some relationship with the action adventure and
platformer genres, and little or no connection with others. The major reason for this
is that adventure games have few activities but high levels of importance, which
other genres fi nd it diffi cult to compete with. These activity groups are: