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Ben Weber's Blog

User Research Analyst at Microsoft Studios. Previously a graduate student in the Expressive Intelligence Studio at UC Santa Cruz.

Member Blogs

ABL versus Behavior Trees
Posted by Ben Weber on Thu, 08 Mar 2012 06:07:00 EST in Programming, Console/PC
A comparison of behavior trees and the ABL planning language.
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Telemetry-Supported Game Design
Posted by Ben Weber on Thu, 01 Dec 2011 02:24:00 EST in Design, Social/Online
An overview of how recording and analyzing player behavior can be incorporated in the game design process.
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APM is not everything in StarCraft
Posted by Ben Weber on Thu, 05 May 2011 08:26:00 EDT in Programming, Console/PC
Higher APM does not always lead to more wins in StarCraft: Brood War.
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The StarCraft AI Competition
Posted by Ben Weber on Fri, 04 Feb 2011 09:59:00 EST in Programming
A reflection upon the AIIDE 2010 StarCraft AI Competition and discussion of what future competitions could provide the game industry.
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From Concept to Game in 48 hours: Global Game Jam 2011
Posted by Ben Weber on Mon, 31 Jan 2011 04:00:00 EST in Design
A look back at the past 48 hours in which I participated in the Global Game Jam.
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Who Owns User-Generated Content?
Posted by Ben Weber on Sat, 15 Jan 2011 09:35:00 EST in Design
Users are increasingly becoming involved in the process of generating game content. But who owns user-generated content?
Read More... \| 8 Comments

[More Ben Weber Blogs]

Ben Weber's Comments

Comment In: Opinion: What's In A Game? [News - 08/18/2011 - 04:27]
There was a post a ... There was a post a couple of months ago on this topic, with more of a focus on high-level reasoning tasks: gamasutra.com/blogs/EvanJones/20110529/7698/Why Is Starcraft So Hard.php RTS games are interesting for AI research because they are cognitively complex for humans, and require a broad range of reasoning capabilities. I agree ...

Comment In: New Research Startup To Identify Key Traits In MMO Players [News - 07/27/2011 - 06:08]
I had the same question. ... I had the same question. From the research papers I can find, it seems that a lot of their previous work has focused on demographic and social analysis of players. I'm not sure how identifying these aspects post release will help developers increase player retention, or enhance user experience.

Comment In: Seriously Gears of War [Blog - 05/09/2011 - 12:18]
Cool infographic, but I have ... Cool infographic, but I have a question about the numbers. How is it that 6 5,989 of players were able to receive the achievement for 100,000 kills, while only 5 4,465 got the achievement for 10,000 kills EDIT: Sorry, did not realize the achievements were from different titles. Still I ...

Comment In: APM is not everything in StarCraft [Blog - 05/05/2011 - 08:26]
The argument that bot APM ... The argument that bot APM needs to be limited to provide a fair challenge is theoretical, because humans are still much better than bots. I am claiming that increasing APM is effective only to a certain point. The APM spike resulted from ordering a large number of units to a ...

Comment In: Rebooting the RPG [Blog - 03/09/2011 - 02:11]
One of the main questions ... One of the main questions here is how much of the agency of storytelling can be preserved while merging two genres. RPGs provide the player with an open world environment in which the story progresses as the player explores more of the world. While in a tower defense game, the ...

Comment In: How IBM’s Watson May Be Game Design’s Holy Grail [Blog - 02/22/2011 - 08:17]
While I expect there to ... While I expect there to be advances in being able to ask Watson general questions as in your well example, I think there will be issues with applying Watson to games, because of the uniqueness of each game universe. There may be enough information in popular culture for Watson to ...

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