20260602 Jeremy Roberts - PetriNet game telemetry and synthetic learning game data OGD OOH

Welcome to Open Game Day office hours! The Open Game Data Community is an NSF-funded research incubator focused on advancing the use of game-generated data to better understand learning, thinking, engagement, and decision-making. Open Office Hours sessions provide a public space where researchers, developers, and educators share works in progress, discuss emerging ideas, and receive feedback from the community. These sessions are designed to showcase research and make expert reasoning and inquiry visible to others in the field. In this session, recorded on 2 June 2026, Jeremy Roberts presents PGT (PetriNet Game Telemetry), an experimental framework that explores how game structure, player telemetry, simulation, and learner modeling might be represented within a unified formal system. Drawing on his background in educational game development and analytics, Jeremy demonstrates how Petri nets can be used to model game systems, simulate player behavior, and reason about the relationship between game design and the data games produce. The discussion explores: Petri nets as a formal representation of game mechanics and player actions Modeling game systems before implementation Simulating gameplay traces and learner pathways Relationships between game design, telemetry, and learning analytics Opportunities for earlier and more cost-effective research and evaluation Automated telemetry generation and validation Game documentation, interoperability, and data standards Future directions for educational game analytics and AI-supported research Throughout the conversation, participants discuss the challenges of representing complex player behavior, the potential for simulation to support game design decisions, and how formal game models might help bridge the gap between researchers, developers, and analytics systems. The session also examines the broader implications of creating machine-readable descriptions of games that can support testing, documentation, analytics, and educational research at scale. Presenter: Jeremy Roberts Host: Erik Harpstead Community: Open Game Data Keywords: educational games, learning analytics, game telemetry, Open Game Data, learning game research, serious games, game-based learning, educational technology, player modeling, Petri nets, game simulation, telemetry analysis, game data, learning sciences, AI in education, educational game design, NSF, research methods, analytics, game research #OpenGameData #LearningAnalytics #EducationalGames #GameBasedLearning #SeriousGames #LearningSciences #GameTelemetry #EdTech #PlayerModeling #ResearchMethods #AIinEducation