An alternative color scheme. Blue and
red lines represent moves made by players that won
and lost, respectively. States are shaded between
blue and red depending on the probability that a
player who reached that state completed the level
successfully.
Figure 3: Viewing just winners (left) and losers
(right) from the same state graph. Comparing these
visualizations can show if winners and losers behave
similarly.
Figure 4: Viewing a cycle in the game state graph.
Cycles correspond to failed hypotheses, as players
make a move but return to where they started.
One useful way to analyze games is to nd areas where a
large proportion of players fail. If 90% of players who reach
a similar set of states give up, then the designer should focus
his or her attention on those states and the paths leading
to it. To this end, Playtracer has an alternate color scheme,
shown in Figure 2. Several players gave up on one or more
attempts and are represented in red. Players that nished,
on the other hand, are represented in blue. In addition,
states are colored to re
ect the probability that a player
who ended up in that state went on to nish the level; bluer
states are ones mostly visited by winning players, while red-
der states are ones mostly visited by losing players. Large
red-hued states are of particular interest as they represent
states visited by many people who mostly failed.
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