Machine Learning for Player Analytics in Tomb Raider: Underworld

In this article I'm going to be talking about Tomb Raider. Now why would I take a look at Underworld, ten years after its original release? Well, hidden behind this game is the story of one of the first major efforts at analysing player performance in a AAA video game -- a feat achieved through large scale data collection and a little bit of help from artificial intelligence. All in an effort to answer the question: do players actually play the games we make in the way we expect them to? Nowadays it's incredibly common for games to adopt some form of analytics: a process whereby data is collected on how well the game performs as well as how players behave within it.