shawn peters
shawn peters
contributor
Jun 23, 2019 7 min read

Improved Single-Player Game Data Tracking

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Designing Entertainment

What makes a video game fun? Many competitive video games are fun for the same reasons that competitive sports are fun: outwitting your opponent and proving your skill feels good. Single-player games do not have the same element of defeating another player, conquering the environment drives the gratification experience. There are generally three types of obstacles in a single-player game:

  1. defeat an AI opponent;
  2. solve a puzzle;
  3. overcome an obstacle course-type of trial.

Wirth et al. (2013) describe ways video game developers walk the fine line between making their game too difficult and too easy. If a game is too easy there is no gratification in playing, it is just boring. On the other hand, a game that is too difficult is less likely to hold gamers’ attention because it is too frustrating.


Gathering Data

Multiplayer competitive games must be balanced so no individual character or weapon is obviously more powerful than all of the others. When a live online game such as Call of Duty or Fortnite has a weapon that upsets that balance, developers will release a patch to the game to rebalance it. Because players need to be connected to the internet to play against each other, developers are able to track a variety of gameplay metrics and data.

Until recently, the video games industry has relied on play testers and preview events to fine-tune the experience prior to release especially on consoles. Consoles only began regularly connecting online in the last two generations. Most single-player games still do not require an online connection to play, however, so there is a dearth of gameplay data available to developers to understand their single-player experiences.


Cloud-Based Future

In March 2019, Google announced their plans to enter the video game market with Google Stadia (Kim, 2019). Much of the market buzz surrounding the announcement stemmed from the raw power that the company can apply to rendering video games. By streaming video games to browsers, all of the work can be done on the back end to generate the graphics, while gamers theoretically can play powerful games in Google Chrome. This means that gameplay which would otherwise require the power of Sony’s Playstation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One combined could be played on a phone.

Google owns YouTube, where over 200 million people watch gaming-related videos each day (Waters, 2019). The player base is already in their ecosystem, and they hope to incentivize gamers to launch games directly from a video that they are watching. This ease of access would make for a major step into the $135 billion video games industry.

By bringing cloud-based gaming to its already massive ecosystem, Google will be the first major market for always-online single-player gaming. What this means for the industry is that developers of single-player games will be able to gather data in a way that was previously impossible.


Helping the Audience

When a gamer used to get stuck on a part in a video game, there were only a few options. Quit, keep trying, look up how to do it online, or wait for a patch if the hang-up was due to a bug. Google has already touted their intent to allow players who are stuck to launch YouTube and automatically bring up a video showing how to get through that spot. That alone is a creative new way of helping gamers get through a hard part in a game.

Developers can also gather real-time data and gain much more insight than ever before into how gamers play games. If a developer puts a system into a game that players never use, there was no real way to know that before. What is the first ability that every player chooses when they level up? Where do people stop playing? What if we put a shop keeper just outside of a particular boss battle to let people buy potions, or what if the boss had 10 fewer hit points?

These decisions and updates can be made based off of raw data to keep people playing the game longer. Game developers want gamers to keep playing their game and do so through any number of means, from additional content after its initial release to special events in game. An occasional connection to the internet has allowed games to become living, rather than a static artifact. Always-online games will allow single-player games to evolve with how gamers play them.


Understanding Behavior

Many studies have been done on behavior of gamers and the psychological impacts of multiplayer gaming. Most of those studies have concentrated on how gamers treat each other. Cyber bullying and anonymous interactions are a top priority for researchers to reduce the toxicity of these environments.

Lamb et al. (2018) used data mined from a computational model they developed to measure gamer aggression during online play. By using machine learning and a strong foundational algorithm, the authors were able to understand and predict gamer behavior in a given set of circumstances. This research is important for improving the lives of individuals by protecting them from gross misbehavior.

Once again, though, the introduction of always-connected single player gaming can give similar insights into how people think while they solve puzzles, how they behave in tactical situations against AI, and any number of other behavioral details. By observing how gamers interact with systems, the popularity and duration of those interactions can be used to drive future development and help in the pursuit of the release of a successful game.

With the feedback and capability to make single-player games a more live experience, we will see the evolution of all video games to fit the wants and needs of the player. As developers have more hard data of how gamers play their games, with essentially millions of play-testers in a live environment, we can expect to see a longer tail on the support of a single player game.


Respect the Customer

Something we should caution against, however, is the temptation of releasing an unfinished game with the intent to patch quality in. Consumers expect and deserve a level of quality in the products that they purchase, and new video games cost $60. For many, that is a real investment that requires thought and at least some analysis before making a purchase. This already happens with many multiplayer games, most notably Final Fantasy XIV and Artifact.

While the former was able to right the ship and ultimately craft a wildly successful experience, it came at great cost to developer SquareEnix after the initial release bombed horribly. Artifact, meanwhile, never did recover and Valve is slowly bringing about the EOL less than a year after it came out.

In short, this new technology and capability should be used to make good games better, and not used as an excuse to release a bad or incomplete game with intent to make it good. As marketers, we need to ensure that we are advertising the product that we are selling, and not the product as it may potentially exist in the future. We need to respect our audience and use these exciting new capabilities to understand our customers even better and bring them new ways to have fun.


References

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