How to Present Game Difficulty Choices?: Exploring the Impact on Player
Experience
Engaging Players in Games
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Smeddinck, Jan D.
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Mandryk, Regan L.
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Birk, Max V.
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Gerling, Kathrin M.
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Barsilowski, Dietrich
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Malaka, Rainer
Proceedings of the ACM CHI'16 Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems
2016-05-07
v.1
p.5595-5607
© Copyright 2016 ACM
Summary: Matching game difficulty to player ability is a crucial step toward a
rewarding player experience, yet making difficulty adjustments that are
effective yet unobtrusive can be challenging. This paper examines the impact of
automatic and player-initiated difficulty adjustment on player experience
through two studies. In the first study, 40 participants played the casual game
THYFTHYF either in motion-based or sedentary mode, using menu-based, embedded,
or automatic difficulty adjustment. In the second study, we created an adapted
version of the commercially available game fl0w to allow us to carry out a more
focused study of sedentary casual play. Results from both studies demonstrate
that the type of difficulty adjustment has an impact on perceived autonomy, but
other player experience measures were not affected as expected. Our findings
suggest that most players express a preference for manual difficulty choices,
but that overall game experience was not notably impacted by automated
difficulty adjustments.
