Play-Persona: Modeling Player Behaviour in Computer Games

Communication studies, cultural studies, literary theory, media studies, semiotics and linguistics
focus on the organization, transmission and interpretation of meanings through different media [63,
70, 1, 9].
From a technological point of view, within the field of computer science, Artificial Intelligence, real-
time computer graphics and networking are only few of the disciplines that see in computer games
a driving force for technical advancements [71, 88, 25].
Regarding the domain of design, the pivotal question is: “how to make better games” and the
largest number of contributions has been made from within - or with applications for - the game
industry, by designers eager to improve the practices in use in development studios. [23, 78, 79,
41, 16, 14, 29, 85, 86, 61, 52].
2.1.1 Debates in game studies
Such a rich field, where many disciplines converge each with its own legacy of ideological
cornerstones, is bound to give rise to heated debates. From the very beginning, the so-called
“narratology versus ludology” controversy had scholars debating whether games should be
considered just as extended versions of traditional storytelling, therefore assuming the
superfluousness of independent methods and approaches and undermining the necessity of a new
discipline; or whether instead the diversity between games and narratives should be acknowledged
and their uniqueness treasured. Fortunately that flame seems to have been doused by recognizing
that the two terms, narratology and ludology, were not representing separate categories but two
poles of the same continuous axis, and no scholar was willing to populate either of the two
extremities of the spectrum, if not as an act of provocation.
There have been several other more or less inflamed debates, but particularly pertinent to my
research is a recent version of an old fracture that seems to have opened in the already
discontinuous fabric of game studies: qualitative (interpretive) versus quantitative (experimental)
research methods, or “social sciences” versus “humanities”.
According to Boellstorff [18, 105], this issue points to a rather old debate on whether scientific
research should be experimental in nature or not, and the recent coalescing of new venues from
which to harvest numerical game data, such as game metrics, has exacerbated the altercation.
Already in 2005 Williams was warning against “scholars entrenched in comfortable home bases that
exclude and denigrate the other camp” [98]. Williams advocated moving beyond terms as
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