Online gaming services not only host the games, but also record the playing of the games. Apparently, the data mined from the recorded game play helps to provide the designers with ideas. Makes good sense to analyze this data, but is still a bit on the creepy side.
This is a really interesting article that I am going to discuss this week with my Computer Science classes. We are starting some game projects and this is a great lead in and conversation piece. Most all of my students play online games so I am curious to see how they respond to this article.
I like to mention games that have social impact to try to bring in some of my students who don’t care so much about games (and to keep myself interested since I don’t much care for games either!).
One I like that collects game data for later analysis is Refraction, a research project from the University of Washington. The game’s goal is to give students practice with fractions. The rich game play information collected help the game’s designers perfect it and help teachers understand what students’ weaknesses are. Used on a massive scale, the game can be used to answer interesting research questions in education — what types of fraction problems are difficult for students, etc.
I am not a huge game player either and try to do some stuff that helps include the non-gamers as well. There are so few of us that we have to stick together! I will take a look at Refraction as it sounds cool.