Presented By Tony Morelli
Outline
Intro/Problem Description Summary
 Visual Network Representations
 Numerical Network Representations
 Questions/Comments

INTRO

Has the organization of the video game
industry changed in the last 20 years?
 Consoles
 Game Titles
 Producers
 Developers
INTRO

Related Work Showed
 Graphical Analysis is good
○ Both Colors and Size are important
Soft Drink Industry
Soft Drink Industry
Seed Industry Consolidation
INTRO

Related Work Showed
 Numerical Analysis is Good
○ Clustering Coefficient
○ Degree Distribution
○ Expansion
Network Topologies, Power Laws,
and Hierarchy
Analyzed internet topology generators
 Metrics

 Expansion
○ “The average fraction of nodes in the graph
that fall within a ball of radius r, centered at a
node in the topology
Comparison of Translations
How accurate are software based
translators?
 Portuguese->Spanish->English
 Clustering Coefficient, Out Degree

Consoles to Analyze

Group A – Classic Consoles
 Atari 2600 (1977)
 Nintendo Entertainment System (1983)
 Sega Master System (1985)
Consoles to Analyze

Group B – Current Consoles
 XBOX 360 (2005)
 Playstation 3 (2006)
 Nintendo Wii (2006)
Problem

Not evaluating enough consoles
 Suggestion – Evaluate all consoles from
Atari 2600 and forward
Enhanced problem
Still want to organize by generations
 Need to group all consoles by
generation

Generation 1
Atari 2600
 Nintendo Entertainment System
 Sega Master System

Generation 2

Super Nintendo (1990)
Generation 2
Super Nintendo (1990)
 Turbo Grafx 16 (1989)

Generation 2
Super Nintendo (1990)
 Turbo Grafx 16 (1989)
 Sega Genesis (1989)

Generation 3

N64 (1996)
Generation 3
N64 (1996)
 Playstation (1994)

Generation 3
N64 (1996)
 Playstation (1994)
 Sega Saturn (1995)

Generation 4

GameCube (2001)
Generation 4
GameCube (2001)
 Xbox (2001)

Generation 4
GameCube (2001)
 Xbox (2001)
 Playstation 2 (2000)

Generation 5
Playstation 3
 Xbox 360
 Nintendo Wii

Suggestions not used

Total Sales for each title
 Data is not available

Cross development
 Developers/publishers that work on multiple
platforms
 My goal is to average statistics for each
generation separately.
 Data is not consistent in naming conventions
○ Would need to do a lot of editing by hand
How to analyze video game
networks?
Collect Data
 Use Software Tools
 Create Tools where existing tools are
not good enough
 Present the data

Data Collection

Need to obtain
 Title
 Console
 Publisher
 Developer
Data is not centrally available
 Spread out across the internet

Data Collection
Need to write a custom scraper to get
data
 Video Game Grabber (VG2)

 Written in C#
Data Collection

VG2 Code
 Need to get data into a csv
○ Easy for importing into other tools
○ Title,Developer,Publisher
○ Console is in the file name
Data Collection

VG2 Code
 C# provides a nice interface
 HttpWebRequest request =
(HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create
(www.yahoo.com);
 HttpRebResponse resp =
(HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
 StreamReader sr = new
StreamReader(resp.GetResponseStream());
 string source = sr.ReadToEnd();
Data Collection

VG2 Code
 Using the previous calls
○ Data retrieved
○ Or links followed to find the data
 Custom functions were written based on
which website the data was pulled from
Data Collection

VG2 Code
Data Collection

VG2 Code
 Error detection
○ Any links that could not be followed
○ Any data that could not be retrieved
○ Recorded as ERROR into the csv file
 These were looked at by hand and either removed or
adjusted.
- Common errors where when the publisher was
different for different regions
- NA publisher was used in these cases
Data Collection

VG2 Code
 Convert csv .net
 Pajek Format
 Sample:
*Vertices 1123
1 "PS3"
2 "100 Bullets"
3 ”Silicon Studio"
4 "D3 Publisher"
5 "2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa"
6 "EA Canada"
7 "EA Sports"
8 "3D Dot Game Heroes"
Data Collection

VG2 Code
 Convert csv .gdf
 GUESS Format
 Sample:
nodedef> name
PS3
100_Bullets
Silcon_Studio
D3_Publisher
2010_FIFA_World_Cup_South_Africa
EA_Canada
EA_Sports
3D_Dot_Game_Heroes
Data Collection

Current Status
 All consoles have data in csv,.net, and .gdf
 Except Sega Saturn
○ Data seems incomplete
 Might assemble data from multiple sites
 Might replace with Dreamcast
 Might just throw it out
Data Analysis

Now that the data is in the correct
formats
 Numerical Analysis
 Graphical Analysis
Numerical Analysis

Clustering Coefficient
 How to do this with Pajek
 Net->Vector->Clustering Coefficient->CC1
Numerical Analysis

Degree Distribution
 How to do this with Pajek
 Net->Partitions->Degree->Output
Numerical Analysis

Expansion
 How to do this with custom software
 Want to know what percentage of nodes are
at each level in the hierarchy
 Percentage of total nodes that are
○ Titles
○ Developers
○ Publishers
What to do with the numbers

Create a plot and produce a trend line
 Average each of the 3 metrics for each
generation
○ Clustering Coefficient
○ Degree Distribution
○ Expansion (3 separate averages)
 Plot the average of each of the 5
generations
Graphical Analysis

Colors
 How to do this with Pajek
 Net->Partitions->Degree->Output
 Draw->Partition
Graphical Analysis

Colors
 How to do this with Pajek
 Layout->Energy->Kamada-Kawai->Separate
Components
Graphical Analysis

Size
 How to do this with GUESS
Graphical Analysis

Size
 How to do this with GUESS
 g.nodes.outdegree
 resizeLinear(outdegree,1,75)
 Layout->Physics
Data Analysis

Create animations from all the data
 3 Consoles from 5 Generations
Data Analysis
Average all numerical results for each
generation
 Show a graph with a trend line for each
metric

Data Analysis

Make guess as to what will happen in
the next generation
 Based on numerical graphs
 Based on visual trends
Questions/Comments?