Research / Challenge and adaptation

Short paper · 2015

Adaptation in Digital Games: The Effect of Challenge Adjustment on Player Performance and Experience

Denisova, A., & Cairns, P.

ConferenceProceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY'15), 2015

Teaser figure: Adaptation in digital games. A screenshot of the time-limited shooting game. For 22 of 42 players the timer secretly adapted: it sped up by 1.4 times when they were doing well and slowed down when they struggled, checked four times per game. Immersion was higher with the adaptive timer, F(1, 40) = 7.41, p = .010, while perceived challenge did not differ.
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In short

Good gaming experiences depend on balancing challenge against the player's skill. We tested a simple form of dynamic difficulty adjustment: changing a game's timer based on each player's performance, without telling players it was happening.

How the study worked

Game
Nightmares, an isometric view shooting game
Players
42 (20 in the control group, 22 in the experimental group)
Goal
Score 300 points or more within a 90-second time limit
Adaptation
Scores were compared to scores recorded in a pilot at four points in the game. If players were doing better than an average player, the timer sped up by a factor of 1.4; if they were doing poorly, it slowed down by the same factor.
What players knew
They were not aware of the feature
Measures
Immersion (IEQ) and in-game scores

Key findings

  • Players whose game adapted to them found it more immersive than players of the non-adaptive version.
  • This gives empirical support for using difficulty adjustment to improve player experience.

What this means

  • Even simple adaptation of a timer, based on player’s performance, can affect their gaming experience.

    Discussion

Read and cite

PDF (accepted version) Publisher's version (DOI)

APA citation

Denisova, A., & Cairns, P. (2015). Adaptation in Digital Games: The Effect of Challenge Adjustment on Player Performance and Experience. In Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY'15) (pp. 97-101).

Line of work

  1. This paper · 2015Adaptation in Digital Games: The Effect of Challenge Adjustment on Player Performance and Experience
  2. Followed by · 2019Player Experience and Deceptive Expectations of Difficulty Adaptation in Digital Games

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