A Petri Net Model for Computer Games Analysis

The origin of this paper comes from the absence of methodologies for computer game analysis. We take film analysis as a basis and consider only story telling based games. Even in this case, some fundamental features cannot be described using classical audiovisual methods. In this paper, we consider the ability to describe non-deterministic structure of the game narration. We describe a semi formal approach based on a Petri Net specification. This method is illustrated on the well-known game Myst. Our approach can also be considered as a starting point for a Game Design method and an authorware tool.