Game-based Data Research Articles

Block-CPS: Blockchain and Non-Cooperative Game-Based Data Pricing Scheme for Car Sharing

This article proposes a blockchain and non-cooperative game theoretic-based secure and optimized data pricing scheme, i.e.,Block-CPS. It aims to secure the data transactions between vehicle owners and customers for rides. It uses the fifth-generation (5G) communication network that offers ultrareliable low-latency communications between vehicle owners and customers. The Interplanetary file system (IPFS) storage protocol used in the proposal reduces the blockchain data storage cost. We then formulated a non-cooperative game-theoretic approach to maximize the profits for vehicle owners and customers. Formulated non-cooperative game is integrated with blockchain to provide security to the Block-CPS. The vulnerability of the developed smart contract is verified and validated using tools like smartcheck and verisol. The performance of Block-CPS is evaluated by comparing it with the traditional approaches using blockchain with 4G and LTE-A networks. The performance evaluation parameters used are system scalability, network latency, data storage cost and its computation, network throughput, profit, communication reliability, and convergence for the optimal payoff between vehicle owners and customers. The performance results shows the Block-CPS outperforms the traditional blockchain-based systems.

Game-Based Data Capture for Player Metrics

Player metrics are an invaluable resource for game designers and QA analysts who wish to understand players, monitor and improve game play, and test design hypotheses. Usually such metrics are collected in a straightforward manner by passively recording players; however, such an approach has several potential drawbacks. First, passive recording might fail to record metrics which correspond to an infrequent player behavior. Secondly, passive recording can be a costly, laborious, and memory intensive process, even with the aid of tools. In this paper, we explore the potential for an active approach to player metric collection which strives to collect data more efficiently, and thus with less cost. We use an online, iterative approach which models the relationship between player metrics and in-game situations probabilistically using a Markov Decision Process (MDP) and solves it for the best game configurations to run. To analyze the benefits and limitations of this approach, we implemented a system, called GAMELAB, for recording player metrics in Second Life.

Proof of Federated Learning: A Novel Energy-Recycling Consensus Algorithm

Proof of work (PoW), the most popular consensus mechanism for blockchain, requires ridiculously large amounts of energy but without any useful outcome beyond determining accounting rights among miners. To tackle the drawback of PoW, we propose a novel energy-recycling consensus algorithm, namely proof of federated learning (PoFL), where the energy originally wasted to solve difficult but meaningless puzzles in PoW is reinvested to federated learning. Federated learning and pooled-mining, a trend of PoW, have a natural fit in terms of organization structure. However, the separation between the data usufruct and ownership in blockchain lead to data privacy leakage in model training and verification, deviating from the original intention of federal learning. To address the challenge, a reverse game-based data trading mechanism and a privacy-preserving model verification mechanism are proposed. The former can guard against training data leakage while the latter verifies the accuracy of a trained model with privacy preservation of the task requester's test data as well as the pool's submitted model. To the best of our knowledge, our article is the first work to employ federal learning as the proof of work for blockchain. Extensive simulations based on synthetic and real-world data demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed mechanisms.

Big Data and Occupants’ Behavior in Built Environments: Introducing a Game-Based Data Collection Method

Abstract Energy-related human behavior in buildings is difficult to define and quantify, yet critical to our understanding of total building energy consumption. It substantially influences energy c...

A Matching Game-Based Data Collection Algorithm with Mobile Collectors.

Data collection is one of the key technologies in wireless sensor networks. Due to the limited battery resources of sensors, mobile collectors are introduced to collect data instead of multi-hop data relay. However, how to decrease the data delay based on the cooperation of mobile collectors is a main problem. To solve this problem, a matching game-based data collection algorithm is proposed. First, some high-level cluster heads are elected. Second, by introducing a matching game model, the data collection problem is modeled as a one to one matching problem. Then, according to the preferences of mobile collectors and cluster heads, the benefit matrices are established. Based on the proposed matching algorithm, each mobile collector selects a cluster head to collect the data packets. Performance analysis proves that the matching result is stable, optimal, and unique. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is superior to other existing approach in terms of the reduction in data delay.

The Potential of Game-Based Digital Biomarkers for Modeling Mental Health.

BackgroundAssessment for mental health is performed by experts using interview techniques, questionnaires, and test batteries and following standardized manuals; however, there would be myriad benefits if behavioral correlates could predict mental health and be used for population screening or prevalence estimations. A variety of digital sources of data (eg, online search data and social media posts) have been previously proposed as candidates for digital biomarkers in the context of mental health. Playing games on computers, gaming consoles, or mobile devices (ie, digital gaming) has become a leading leisure activity of choice and yields rich data from a variety of sources.ObjectiveIn this paper, we argue that game-based data from commercial off-the-shelf games have the potential to be used as a digital biomarker to assess and model mental health and health decline. Although there is great potential in games developed specifically for mental health assessment (eg, Sea Hero Quest), we focus on data gathered “in-the-wild” from playing commercial off-the-shelf games designed primarily for entertainment.MethodsWe argue that the activity traces left behind by natural interactions with digital games can be modeled using computational approaches for big data. To support our argument, we present an investigation of existing data sources, a categorization of observable traits from game data, and examples of potentially useful game-based digital biomarkers derived from activity traces.ResultsOur investigation reveals different types of data that are generated from play and the sources from which these data can be accessed. Based on these insights, we describe five categories of digital biomarkers that can be derived from game-based data, including behavior, cognitive performance, motor performance, social behavior, and affect. For each type of biomarker, we describe the data type, the game-based sources from which it can be derived, its importance for mental health modeling, and any existing statistical associations with mental health that have been demonstrated in prior work. We end with a discussion on the limitations and potential of data from commercial off-the-shelf games for use as a digital biomarker of mental health.ConclusionsWhen people play commercial digital games, they produce significant volumes of high-resolution data that are not only related to play frequency, but also include performance data reflecting low-level cognitive and motor processing; text-based data that are indicative of the affective state; social data that reveal networks of relationships; content choice data that imply preferred genres; and contextual data that divulge where, when, and with whom the players are playing. These data provide a source for digital biomarkers that may indicate mental health. Produced by engaged human behavior, game data have the potential to be leveraged for population screening or prevalence estimations, leading to at-scale, nonintrusive assessment of mental health.

Fueling Prediction of Player Decisions: Foundations of Feature Engineering for Optimized Behavior Modeling in Serious Games

As a digital learning medium, serious games can be powerful, immersive educational vehicles and provide large data streams for understanding player behavior. Educational data mining and learning analytics can effectively leverage big data in this context to heighten insight into student trajectories and behavior profiles. In application of these methods, distilling event-stream data down to a set of salient features for analysis (i.e. feature engineering) is a vital element of robust modeling. This paper presents a process for systematic game-based feature engineering to optimize insight into player behavior: the IDEFA framework (Integrated Design of Event-stream Features for Analysis). IDEFA aligns game design and data collection for high-resolution feature engineering, honed through critical, iterative interplay with analysis. Building on recent research in game-based data mining, we empirically investigate IDEFA application in serious games. Results show that behavioral models which used a full feature set produced more meaningful results than those with no feature engineering, with greater insight into impactful learning interactions, and play trajectories characterizing groups of players. This discovery of emergent player behavior is fueled by the data framework, resultant base data stream, and rigorous feature creation process put forward in IDEFA—integrating iterative design, feature engineering, and analysis for optimal insight into serious play.

Game-based data offloading scheme for IoT system traffic congestion problems

Internet of things (IoT) is seen as another information and industrial wave after the invention of personal computers, the Internet, and mobile communication networks. Especially, IoT/cellular network integration becomes a new service platform for the different kinds of traffic manipulation. However, due to the excessive traffic demands, it is currently facing a severe traffic overload problem. In this paper, we propose a new traffic control scheme based on the data offloading technique. By using the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism and Rubinstein bargaining game model, our data offloading approach can effectively alleviate the IoT traffic congestion while enhancing the quality-of-service (QoS) in cellular network systems. Finally, we show the effectiveness of our proposed scheme through extensive simulations.

Evolutionary game-based data aggregation model for wireless sensor networks

Data aggregation has been emerged as a basic approach in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in order to reduce the number of transmissions of sensor nodes. Since multi-source data obtained from different nodes represent redundancy or complement property, as an effective tool to deal with the conflicts, the use of game theory for WSNs is provided. The authors propose a common aggregation model, which is independent of the specific application environments, based on the evolutionary game theory called evolutionary game-based data aggregation model (EGDAM) in WSNs. EGDAM made up of formal definition, functional model and general process is defined to map the competition and cooperation in aggregation procedure into games, and well-avoid perfect rationality. The authors then put the theoretic model into application. Guided by our model, an evolutionary game-based adaptive weighting algorithm named EGWDA is provided for the pixel-level data aggregation with homogeneous sensors. Reasonable weights distribution of sensors can be achieved during the aggregation in WSNs. The experiments on both the self-constructed data and the one from reference made satisfied performances.