Adaptation in digital games: The effect of challenge adjustment on player performance and experience

TY - GEN

T1 - Adaptation in digital games

T2 - 2nd ACM SIGCHI Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, CHI PLAY 2015

AU - Denisova, Alena

AU - Cairns, Paul

PY - 2015/10/5

Y1 - 2015/10/5

N2 - Good gaming experiences hinge on players being able to have a balance between challenge and skill. However, achieving that balance is challenging, so dynamic difficulty adjustment offers the opportunity to provide better gaming experiences through adapting the challenge in the game to suit an individual's capabilities. The risk though is that in adapting the difficulty, players do not get a true sense of challenge, but rather some tailored, perhaps watered down experience. In this note, we report on a study, in which we used time manipulation as a method of simple adaptation in order to explore its effect on player experience (PX) and performance. Volunteers played a game in which the timer was adjusted based on their performance in the game, however they were not aware of the feature. The results showed that players in the experimental group found the game more immersive. This provides empirical support that dynamic difficulty adjustment could be used to improve the PX.

AB - Good gaming experiences hinge on players being able to have a balance between challenge and skill. However, achieving that balance is challenging, so dynamic difficulty adjustment offers the opportunity to provide better gaming experiences through adapting the challenge in the game to suit an individual's capabilities. The risk though is that in adapting the difficulty, players do not get a true sense of challenge, but rather some tailored, perhaps watered down experience. In this note, we report on a study, in which we used time manipulation as a method of simple adaptation in order to explore its effect on player experience (PX) and performance. Volunteers played a game in which the timer was adjusted based on their performance in the game, however they were not aware of the feature. The results showed that players in the experimental group found the game more immersive. This provides empirical support that dynamic difficulty adjustment could be used to improve the PX.

KW - Adaptation

KW - Digital games

KW - Immersion

KW - Player performance

KW - Time manipulation

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84959262081&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1145/2793107.2793141

DO - 10.1145/2793107.2793141

M3 - Conference contribution

AN - SCOPUS:84959262081

SN - 9781450334662

SP - 97

EP - 101

BT - CHI PLAY 2015 - Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play

PB - ACM

Y2 - 5 October 2015 through 7 October 2015

ER -