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Nintendo Businesses Math Entertainment Games

NES Games and Statistical Analysis 54

Posted by Zonk from the serious-science dept.
szadig writes "The New Gamer has published an article which tackles the topic of averaging gameplay. The accompanying video features 15 different players simultaneously shooting their way through the first stage in the NES game Gradius. From the article: 'The average time taken to kill the end level boss was 20.055 seconds, with the fastest player finishing him off in a mere 10.01 seconds. Six people finished the boss off at nearly identical moments. It would seem that the boss, bored with the player, actually self-destructs after 27 seconds. Beyond the almost perfectly synchronized explosions, further proof of this self-destruction can be found in the videos: no 10,000 point bonus (given to players when the boss is defeated) was awarded to these six players and, in a few of the runs, the boss detonated when there wasn't a single bullet near it.' Can we apply other statistical methods to gameplay?"
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NES Games and Statistical Analysis More

NES Games and Statistical Analysis

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  • You know.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Headcase88 ( 828620 ) on Saturday February 11, 2006 @03:49PM (#14695791) Journal
    Getting 15 people together to do a statistical analysis to find out whether a boss self-desructs isn't quite as efficient as just having one person avoiding the boss for a while and just seeing whether it blows up or not.

    A lot of the other stuff in the article was interesting though... looks like he put a lot of effort into it.
    • Getting 15 people together to do a statistical analysis to find out whether a boss self-desructs isn't quite as efficient as just having one person avoiding the boss for a while and just seeing whether it blows up or not.

      I don't think his point was to find out whether or not the boss self-desrtucted - it was about analyzing statistics about gameplay and they just happened to stumble upon the boss's self-destructing.
      • I think the point was probably to get listed on Slashdot. I can't see any reason for applying statistical analysis to gameplay. Especially not to a game that is as old as that one. What purpose will it serve?

        • Re:You know.. (Score:2, Insightful)

          by denmarkw00t ( 892627 )
          Its actually pretty interesting. Alot of today's gamers aren't as familiar with the 2D environments and simple gameplay - fly and shoot. It presents quite a change of pace for the average gamer and, if someone really takes the time, those statistics could be valuable. Maybe there is some way to compare them to similar gaming tasks in today's realm of quality graphics, crisp sound and interactive gameplay. I think it's a good starting point for learning alot about how the mind of the gamer works - including
    • i'd like to see a statistical analysis of that horrid ET game for Atari... see how many players committed seppuku after finding out the levels are all the same. i'll bet it's in the thousands at least. or, see exactly how dumb the grunts in halo are...

  • Mirror (Score:4, Informative)

    by SillySnake ( 727102 ) on Saturday February 11, 2006 @03:55PM (#14695816)
    I'd make a torrent, but I'm running Gentoo on an 800Mhz Athlon and it's gonna take me a couple of hours to compile Bit Torrent :-/ If the site dies.. I'll give my bandwidth a go: http://www.wartsworld.com/AveragingGradius.mov [wartsworld.com]
  • I would like to see an analysis of the original Sonic the Hedgehog's first stage. No matter how many times I play it, it seems exactly the same. I wonder how many variations there actually are!
    • i was just glad to some noob get pwned during the video. and I think i have a trademark on the going to uper left with missles on the volcano part
  • So, that video made me wonder. Are there any multiplayer sidescrolling space shooters that allow up to 15 players to have a go at a level at once? That would be awesome!

  • Stastical Analysis (Score:3, Insightful)

    by queenb**ch ( 446380 ) on Saturday February 11, 2006 @04:53PM (#14696066) Homepage Journal
    It would seem to me that you'd need a sample size bigger than 15 in order to be considered "stastically significant". I would recommend conducting such tests with a far larger group of testers, or at least with the same people more than once so that you gather enough results to be somewhat conclusive.

    2 cents,

    Queen B
    • You obviously haven't studied statistics. We predict presidential elections by surveying 400 people in a country of 280 million. This is far less complex, and there are far fewer variables.

      • You obviously haven't studied statistics. We predict presidential elections by surveying 400 people in a country of 280 million. This is far less complex, and there are far fewer variables.

        Well, if you're measuring one variable (time in this case), you need roughly 30 samples to approach a representative distribution. The variance may still be pretty high, but you're at least approaching the true population mean once you're past 30. Close enough to work with for this example, anyway.

        Presidential ele

        • I have to say the greatest tragedy of your post is the de facto assumption that presidential elections are binomial problems...

          • I have to say the greatest tragedy of your post is the de facto assumption that presidential elections are binomial problems...

            Rightly or wrongly, most pollsters frame the questions as binomial and ignore the marginals. So, if you're in the US, it's Republican vs. Democrat. If you're in Australia, it's Labor vs. Liberal. It's funny that you point it out though - I didn't even pick that up. I just thought of the easiest real-world example I could think of. It's a bit of a sad comment on our electora

    • Ah, so you're the Slashdot poster that sees the word "statistics" and bitches about sample size almost like a reflex, regardless of whether the concept even makes any sense in context.

      Who cares about "statistical significance"? Were you actually planning on using this data to come to some sort of conclusion of any importance? I sure hope that in your world, this is not terribly useful data!
    • Yeah, the only thing standing between these results and real-world usefulness is statistical significance. That may keep it from making it into an academic journal, y'know.
    • There's absolutely no reason a sample size of 15 can't produce statistically significant results. When computing whether a result is significant, sample size is taken into account with the other factors to produce the result, and 15 is sufficiently large to pick up major effects. I'm getting tired of having to explain how basic statistics works on a computer/technology site.

  • Torrent (Score:2, Informative)

    by Yonatanz ( 798506 )
    The full 26Meg file, in a decentralized azureus torrent:

    dht://1ACB2F69B008DAA48210AE53C3B96A8DE88C7B55.dht /announce [dht]

    Have fun!

  • Another interesting "average" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Saturday February 11, 2006 @06:39PM (#14696674) Journal
    Another interesting "average", though technically harder to pull off, would be to get 15 players simultaneously watching the same game in real-time, "averaging" in some reasonably manner the 15 inputs coming in, and feeding that to the game. It would be interesting to see if it sucks, or manages to play better than the individuals, or what.
  • I had never played a football game before so one day I played a friend of mine. Huge football fan and really into the electronic games.

    Now this one was pretty standard fare you choose a play they run it, you throw to the player, now after watching for a while it became obvious that it was totally scripted, each receiver would be open at a set point in their run and you throw them the ball.

    When I mentioned it was simply a matter of watching 2 receivers (maybe the blitz is too quick for the first one) and
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Are you kidding me? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      'Anyone who played these games KNOWS its not a matter of "figuring out how to outsmart or out-maneuver the end-level boss..."

      It's always been just a matter of memorizing the pattern. Like, no shit.'

      From TFA:

      "What first caught my eye when compiling the video, which came as a complete shock, was that the end boss wasn't set on a absolute path! Instead, it responds and reacts to the player's actions. Now perhaps this isn't a surprise to all those Gradius pros out there, but I was pretty impressed to see that s

  • Disassemble (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Saturday February 11, 2006 @08:52PM (#14697356) Journal
    Why not disassemble the game and take a look at what the program is designed to do?

    Dan East
    • This isn't about what the program is designed to do, it's about how people play the game. Ripping apart the code can't tell you anything about that.
  • I've noticed for years that most console games follow a predictable pattern. The same enemies are always going to be in the same place every time a player runs through a level. These games perform predetermined actions actions at set times. PC games have generally offered more randomization and AI. I assume it's due to a lack processing power in consoles.

    In recent years that has changed, but console developers still seem to have the habit of resorting to predictable patterns. While it adds a puzzle-type ele
  • Did submitter not read the footnote for '**'? That player didn't win in 10.01 seconds, they died halfway through the level. Didn't you find it odd that the fastest time also had the lowest score? I can understand people replying who don't do it, but I would think that at least the submitter could take the time to RTFA.
    • What? Those times aren't how long it took to beat the stage. Didn't you find it odd the the slowest time was only 27.30 seconds? The video is almost three minutes long. Those are listed as boss times, i.e. the time it takes to defeat the boss. The player that died halfway through the level doesn't have a boss time because they never made it.

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