Swords, Data and Balls: Extracting Extreme Behavioural Prototypes with Kernel Minimum Enclosing Balls

Extracting behavioural prototypes plays an important role in player profiling. Understanding the type of players present in the game goes alongside improving game-play experience as well as player engagement over time. In this paper, we introduce the application of Kernel Minimum Enclosing Balls (KMEBs) as a tool to extract meaningful extreme prototypes in games and present an example use-case analyzing a behavioural dataset from a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Unlike the majority of the methods covered in this context, our approach allows for modelling nominal and numerical behavioural features, extending the scope and capability of the profiling methods as well as improving the interpretability of the results.