The Game Trace Archive

1. Motivation and Goals

Spurred by the rapid development of the gaming industry and the expansion of Online Meta-Gaming Networks (OMGNs), many gaming studies and measurements have been conducted in recent years. However, few or no traces of games and OMGNs are publicly available to game researchers and practitioners. Moreover, the few traces that are available are shared using diverse formats. This situation is an obstacle in exchanging, studying, and using game traces.

To address this problem, we design the Game Trace Archive (GTA). The goal of building the GTA is  to provide a virtual meeting space for the game community to exchange game traces. To facilitate the exchange and usage of game traces, a unified Game Trace Format (GTF) is proposed to  include many types of game traces. Along with the GTF, tools for format conversion and analysis should also be provided.

2. Approach

Our approach to building the Game Trace Archive is: 

  • We propose the GTF to represent many types of game traces. The data format is extensible for new traces. The description of GTF can be found in our technical report PDF. For more traditional gaming data, such as packets between game clients and servers, match replays, etc., we use when possible the de-facto standard formats.
  • We will make available online tools for easy GTF conversion. Generic tools for statistical analysis of the data in GTF format will also be provided. Analysis reports generated by these tools will be shown.
  • We will create and maintain the Game Trace Archive's website.

3. Timeline

  • [29-04-2016] - The 14th trace GTA-T14 DLI online.
  • [29-04-2016] - The 13th trace GTA-T13 WoT-gamecast online.
  • [14-03-2014] - The 12th trace GTA-T12 WoWPosition online.
  • [12-03-2014] - The 11th trace GTA-T11 WoT online.
  • [12-03-2014] - The 10th trace GTA-T10 SC2 online.
  • [29-08-2013] - The 9th trace GTA-T9 FacebookApp online.
  • [29-08-2013] - The 8th trace GTA-T8 OGS online.
  • [29-08-2013] - The 7th trace GTA-T7 MineCraft online.
  • [24-05-2013] - The 6th trace GTA-T6 BBO online.
  • [24-05-2013] - The 5th trace GTA-T5 KGS online.
  • [22-01-2013] - The 4th trace GTA-T4 WoWAH online.
  • [22-01-2013] - The 3rd trace GTA-T3 WoWSession online.
  • [03-10-2012] - The 2nd trace GTA-T2 Dota-League online.
  • [19-09-2012] - The 1st trace GTA-T1 Dotalicious online. 
  • [12-09-2012] - The Game Trace Archive website online.

4. Contributing

We are looking for contributors who would like to share their game traces through the Game Trace Archive. If you would like to contribute your game traces, please contact us. We will help you gather the traces, we will anonymize and process the traces, we will publish with your consent the traces.

5. Team

 

 

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