Activity - Game Invaders: The Theory and Understanding of Computer Games - page 72

Table 3.2 The 49 Activity Types in Their Twitch Categories

Driving/
Riding

Gameplay/
Enhancement

Fighting Stunts/Skills Strategy/Tactics Narrative

Attacking
Capturing
Confronting
Damage
Defending
Physical
contact
Pursuit
Targeting
Use of
weapons
Warfare

Driving/
riding
Flying
On foot
On rails
Racing
Sailing
Swimming
Speed

Dancing
Manipulating
Maneuvering
Performing
magic
Power ups
Skill
enhancement
Stealing
Stealth
Stunts

Building
Commanding
Communicating
Consuming
Exploring
Investigating
Management
Mission - based
Producing
Puzzling
Rescuing
Strategy
Trading
Traveling

Accumulating
rewards
Character
development
Collecting
items
Customizing
Unlocking
items

Cut
scenes
Music
Story

and story might not appear activities at all at a fi rst glance but if you think about it
you have to watch a cut scene, listen to music, and work out what the story of the
game is. These are all activities that you take time to perform during the gameplay
process but they are more akin to traditional media such as fi lm or TV in that you
don't have to do anything to directly control them. Music can be the odd one out in
this case, as there will be skill involved in creating the music within rhythm action
games, although you may still be listening to the music that you create as part of
the narrative.
Looking at the breakdown overall we see that strategy/tactics has the most AGs
by far (27%) followed closely by fi ghting (20%), stunts/skills (18%), driving/riding
(16%), gameplay/enhancement (10%), and narrative (6%). This doesn't mean you' ll
fi nd strategy/tactics-type activities most often in activity profi les. It just means that
reviewers needed a lot more AGs in order to describe games with these types of
activities in them. In fact, most games will have fi ghting-type activities in them
even though that might not include use of weapons and such like. Many games will
also have passive activity types in them as well, even though there aren't very many
of them.
The rapid reaction group consists of fi ghting, driving/riding, and stunts/skills,
whereas the more measured group of characteristics includes strategy/tactics,
gameplay/enhancement, and narrative. We fi nd that 55% of activity groups fall into
the former category and 45% the latter, so although there are more rapid response,
twitch-type activity groups than there are more measured ones, this proves that there
is a lot more to games than just fi ghting.
The twitch factor is a further measure we can derive from a game activity
profi le. Basically, we calculate an overall score for the rapid reaction group and the