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G. Wallner, S. Kriglstein:
"Visualization-based analysis of gameplay data - A review of literature";
Entertainment Computing, 4 (2013), 3; 143 - 155.

As video games are becoming more and more complex and are reaching a broader audience, there is an increasing interest in procedures to analyze player behavior and the impact of design decisions. Game companies traditionally relied on user-testing methods, like playtesting, surveys or videotaping, to obtain player feedback. However, these qualitative methods for data collection are time-consuming and the obtained data is often incomplete or subjective. Therefore, instrumentation became popular in recent years to unobtrusively obtain the detailed data required to thoroughly evaluate player behavior. To make sense of the large amount of data, appropriate tools and visualizations have been developed.

This article reviews literature on visualization-based analysis of game metric data in order to give an overview of the current state of this emerging field of research. We discuss issues related to gameplay analysis, propose a broad categorization of visualization techniques and discuss their characteristics. Furthermore, we point out open problems to promote future research in this area.

Games, Evaluation,Gameplay analysis, Visualization

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.entcom.2013.02.002