Introduction to Sequence Analysis

All behavioral telemetry from players can be understood as sequences of actions and game state changes. We can think of games as state machines: a player performs an action, and the game calculates a response. These responses trigger an update to the game state (describes the environment variables of the game), and the player is then confronted with new choices to perform a new action. We can envision game playing as a cyclical process of players performing actions, followed by updates to the game state.

Example

For example, in a role-playing game (RPG), users talk to NPCs, and when presented with a dialogue option, they make a specific selection. They are then given an answer and a range of possible other actions to take. This prompts a further selection, and so on. Each decision the player makes is informed by the state of the game at the time that an action was taken. This state is a description of a situation or context, including the options available to the player at the time of action selection, what the NPC has told the player in the past, the NPC’s state, etc. The below figure shows a depiction of this cycle/loop.