PI:  Brian Mennecke

Summary: The primary objective of this project is to demonstrate the potential for game simulations to be used to identify patterns of behavior, environmental contextual factors, and similar cues. Additionally, the project will examine the reasoning to sensing and responding to these contextual and behavioral cues.

While the project will focus on identifying patterns that are useful in sense making, the focus of this research is not on identifying an exhaustive set of said patterns (i.e., we will not attempt to discover new patterns, but merely to identify those that relate to this game environment). Instead, the primary purpose of this research is to demonstrate that extant MMOG game environments represent useful simulation platforms for investigating behavioral pattern recognition and similar phenomenon .