Activity - Game Invaders: The Theory and Understanding of Computer Games - page 71

For AGs scoring 3 to 5, the two games share exploring, mission-based, and use
of weapons, all of which are twitchy AGs. Of the AGs they don't share in the 3 to
5 score range, FFX has performing magic, character development, and traveling, the
fi rst two of which are non-twitchy; while Sacred has just one, skill enhancement,
which is also a non-twitchy AG.
Of the three AGs that FFX has but Sacred doesn't, communicating, customizing,
and cut scenes, all three are non-twitchy. The only AGs for which Sacred scores
higher than FFX are attacking and stealing; both classed as twitchy.
All these activities in both profi les are characteristic of RPGs , including all the
lower scoring AGs we haven't discussed. All in all we can observe that while both
games have very typical profi les for RPGs , they are in fact different to a degree.
Remember, we said this about genres in general. Games that belong to the same
genre will be very much the same and yet different as well. Sacred scores lower on
the skill enhancement, character development-type activities so typical of RPGs and
scores higher on fi ghting-type activities. In this respect FFX actually conforms rather
more closely to the typical RPG profi le than Sacred does.
In fact, RPGs are the most complex of games in terms of their activity profi les,
and a typical RPG will have around twenty or more AGs in its profi le.
But we didn't stop there. We did some data warehousing; we analyzed the data
we already had in order to look for patterns that could generate even more data—
meta-data, if you like. One thing we did was to compare the activity profi les for
every game to every other game and feed those results into the database. This is
called a correlation matrix and makes it really quick and easy to see how similar
two or more games are or aren't. It allows us to do other things as well, such as fi nd
games which have the closest activity profi le to the one selected. As you'll see later,
this cuts across genres and looks at games in a far more fundamental way.
So that's the basic story behind GIL and profi ling games on AGs. It is not perfect
but it is a very useful and unique resource for educators and students, developers,
publishers, journalists, and anyone else with a professional interest in computer
games. In the rest of the chapter we are going to study the practical applications of
GIL and the various applications of activity profi ling. In doing this we'll also revisit
what we found out about game genres in Chapter 2 and see how we can use these
new techniques and all this new data to turn guesswork into empirical support for
the intuition and creativity of game developers.
AN OVERVIEW OF ACTIVITY PROFILES
Before going on to put activity profi les into practical use we'll look in a little more
detail at the activity groups and some of their characteristics. In Table 3.2 you' ll fi nd
all the 49 AGs. We've also clustered these AGs into sets based on their gameplay
characteristics, so we can see if there is any pattern to them. In Table 3.2 we' ve
divided the 49 AGs into six basic groups concerned with: fi ghting, driving/riding,
stunts/skills, strategy/tactics, gameplay/enhancement, and narrative. The fi rst fi ve
should be self-explanatory but the last might seem a little odd. Cut scenes, music,