Shuo Xiong

An Approach to Quantifying Pokemon's Entertainment Impact with Focus on Battle

This paper explores the attractiveness of Pokemon which is a turn-based Role Playing Game (RPG) and has been very popular for the decades. In this study we focus on Pokemon battle which is the most important component in Pokemon. The game refinement theory is used as a tool to assess the degree of sophistication of Pokemon battle. For this purpose we apply two approaches of game progress modeling to derive game refinement measure, i.e., score limit sports approach and board game approach. We calculated game refinement values for Pokemon battle by collecting many data from Pokemon Showdown, an online Pokemon battle simulator. The results show that the values of game refinement for Pokemon are slightly lower than the comfortable zone that we supposed in the previous study. We are tempted to conclude that such a slightly lower value is important to attract children with appropriate degree of excitement in playing Pokemon.

Fairness mechanism in multiplayer online battle arena games

This paper explores key factors to maintain fairness in e-sports like Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) games: Dota 2, League of Legends, and Heroes of the Storm. It analyzes the degree of fairness based on the winning ratio. Moreover, it considers the evolution of MOBA games with focus on three major factors: the ban and pick system, balancing characters and maps, and compares with other games such as board games and sports games. It is found that fairness is important but not so essential in the domain of e-sports from entertainments point of view, even though fairness is significantly important in the domain of sports and board games.

Solving the Sophistication-Population Paradox of Game Refinement Theory

A mathematical model of game refinement was proposed based on uncertainty of game outcome. This model has been shown to be useful in measuring the entertainment element in the domains such as boardgames and sport games. However, game refinement theory has not been able to explain the correlation between the popularity of a game and the game refinement value. This paper introduces another aspect in the study of game entertainment, the concept of “attractiveness” to reasonably explain the sophistication-population paradox of game refinement theory.

Possible Interpretations for Game Refinement Measure

This paper explores possible interpretations for game refinement measure which has been successfully used to quantify the game sophistication of various types of games such as boardgames and sports. It presents a brief sketch of game refinement theory with a focus on its early works with boardgames, expansion into continuous movement games such as sports, and a bridge between sports and boardgames. It then highlights the bridging idea while considering possible interpretations for game refinement measure, and the meaning of game refinement measure is discussed with a focus on the skill and chance aspects in game playing. It enables to have a new perspective of game refinement theory. Moreover, an example of interpretation for game refinement measure from boardgames and continuous movement games such as MOBA game is shown. The interpretation is well fitting to our intuition as game players and spectators.

An Analysis of DOTA2 Using Game Refinement Measure.

DotA is one of the most attractive and influential MOBA games, which has been popular in many countries for over 10 years. It was designed for fun at first, however, after the emerge of DOTA2 it soon became the highest prize e-sports game. This paper analyzes the evolutionary changes of the DOTA2. The game refinement measure is employed for the assessment of game sophistication of DOTA2 series. The analyzing results show that the rules of DOTA2 have regularly been changed in its history to maintain an appropriate range of game refinement. We clearly see two directions during the evolutionary changes which are the skillfulness and popularity. Thus, the analysis makes it possible to overview these evolutionary changes of DOTA2 and find some drawbacks to be improved.

Reaper Tournament System

This paper explores a novel way for analyzing tournament structures. Our goal is to find the best suitable tournament under considered purposes. Aside from the number of matches, we address on two other important aspects: competitiveness development and ranking precision. Competitiveness development emphasizes the importance participants’ motivation in every match while keeping the matches exciting throughout the tournament. Ranking precision reflects the credibility of tournament results, so that prizes can be distributed with minimum complains and dissatisfaction. To address competitiveness development, this paper proposes a new method which visualizes tournament structures as a tree using graphical model approach, which we call progress tree. Considering the similarities of sorting algorithm with the ranking process, ranking precision is discussed based on the quality of algorithm for the ranking task. This paper also analyzes well known tournament structures such as single elimination, double elimination, round robin and Swiss system. The performed analysis reveals the strength and weakness of each tournament structure. Although each tournament has its own pros and cons, none of them can convince the tournament results for all participants while keeping the matches strongly motivating thoroughly. Thus, a new tournament structure called reaper tournament system is proposed in this paper to meet those requirements.

Mafia Game Setting Research Using Game Refinement Measurement

This paper explores the game sophistication of a popular party game called Mafia or Werewolf. It focuses on the playing settings, i.e., the number of total players (say N) including citizen, mafia (m), sheriff (s) and doctor (d), denoted as MFG(N, m, d, s). Computer simulations for a simple version of Mafia game are conducted to collect the data while game refinement measure is employed for the assessment. The results indicate several interesting observations. For example, the measure of game refinement reduces as the number of players increases. This implies that Mafia game would become boring as the number of players becomes too large. MFG(N, m, s, d) can be played reasonably with \(N \in \{14, 15, 16\}, m \in \{5, 6\}, s = 1\) and \(d \in \{1, 2\}\). In particular, MFG(15, 5, 1, 1) or MFG(15, 6, 1, 2) is the best to play under the assumption that its game refinement measure is within the sophisticated zone. Moreover, the level of players affects the game balancing and game sophistication. For example, mafia would dominate citizens if all players are weak, which implies that the game sophistication would be reduced.

Mathematical model of ranking accuracy and popularity promotion

Elo rating system has been widely used to predict the outcomes in various domains such as board games and sports games. However, Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) like other associations use their own ranking system with certain purposes other than ranking accuracy only. This paper discuss studies of four different ranking methods: Elo rating system, Betting Odds, FIFA rating based on Elo style and FIFA rating based on Davidson Wangs method, with which 36 round-robin matches of UEFA Euro 2016 are analyzed. We then explore entertainment aspects based on uncertainty of outcome prediction that may have occurred by ranking methods. Moreover, this paper considers the trade-off between the ranking accuracy and popularity promotion. Further investigation is needed to assess the well balance between ranking accuracy and popularity promotion.

An Approach to Entertainment Tuning in RPGs: Case Study Using Diablo III and Trails of Cold Steel

This paper proposes a novel method to tune the entertainment impact of Role-playing-game (RPG) with a focus on three bottlenecks of the current RPG: (1) weapon trading system, (2) linear turn-based battle system, and (3) game rhythm and time, i.e., level-up system. We have chosen Diablo III and Trails of Cold Steel as benchmarks, and game refinement measure is employed for the assessment. It reveals that a reliable level up system is the key factor to make the players feel more exciting and adventurous. It then confirms the effectiveness of the proposed method which enables to numerically identify the components that need to be enhanced to improve the game and help creators design a more attractive game by the paradigmatic rules. Future works include the application of the proposed method in other domains such as serious games.

Evolutionary Changes of Pokemon Game: A Case Study with Focus On Catching Pokemon

Game refinement is a unique theory that has been used as a reliable tool for measuring the attractiveness and sophistication of the games considered. A game refinement measure is derived from a game information progress model and has been applied in various games. In this paper, we aim to investigate the attractiveness of Pokemon, one of the most popular turn-based RPG games. We focus on catching Pokemons which are important components in the game. Then, we propose a new game refinement model with consideration on a prize cost and apply it to catching Pokemons. We analyze in every generation of the game. Experimental results show that a game refinement value of catching Pokemons which has been changed many times tries to reach to an appropriate range of game refinement value: 0.07 − 0.08 for which previous works have confirmed.