Visualizing Player Movement and Game Events through Space-Time Cubes in Extended Reality

Year: 2025

Conference: IEEE VIS (to appear)

Authors: Niko S. Nannemann, Shivam Agarwal, and Fabian Beck

Abstract

To understand multiplayer gameplay behavior in a bomb-laying game, this paper explores the visual representation of player movement and events using space-time cubes. Complementing a previous two-dimensional event visualization, the approach focuses on contextualizing the player trajectories on the board with important events. Leveraging extended reality technology, the three-dimensional space-time-cube representation of a game session can be placed like columns in the virtual space. Various techniques support the interactive exploration of the spatiotemporal data. We demonstrate insights that can be found through the analysis of AI agent play behavior.

Citation

@inproceedings{Nannemann2025Visualizing,
  author     = {Niko S. Nannemann, Shivam Agarwal, and Fabian Beck},
  title      = {Visualizing Player Movement and Game Events through Space-Time Cubes in Extended Reality},
  booktitle  = {IEEE VIS (to appear)},
  year       = {2025},
  publisher  = {IEEE},
  paperurl   = {/publications/Nannemann2025Visualizing/Nannemann2025Visualizing.pdf},
  abstract   = {To understand multiplayer gameplay behavior in a bomb-laying game, this paper explores the visual representation of player movement and events using space-time cubes. Complementing a previous two-dimensional event visualization, the approach focuses on contextualizing the player trajectories on the board with important events. Leveraging extended reality technology, the three-dimensional space-time-cube representation of a game session can be placed like columns in the virtual space. Various techniques support the interactive exploration of the spatiotemporal data. We demonstrate insights that can be found through the analysis of AI agent play behavior.}
}