Patterns of game playing behavior as indicators of mastery

Every game is a serious one, i.e., every game is appropriate for some learning. How it works and what is learned depends on the context of game playing. Assuming suitable formalizations, there are patterns of game playing behavior. In digital games that are difficult to play, certain occurrences of instances of patterns are indicators of the human player's mastery or, vice versa, failure. Logically represented pattern concepts set the stage for formal reasoning about characteristics of human game playing experiences and even for automatically learning patterns from instances.