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Main Authors: Kristensen, Jeppe Theiss, Burelli, Paolo
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.17436
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author Kristensen, Jeppe Theiss
Burelli, Paolo
author_facet Kristensen, Jeppe Theiss
Burelli, Paolo
contents Difficulty is one of the key drivers of player engagement and it is often one of the aspects that designers tweak most to optimise the player experience; operationalising it is, therefore, a crucial task for game development studios. A common practice consists of creating metrics out of data collected by player interactions with the content; however, this allows for estimation only after the content is released and does not consider the characteristics of potential future players. In this article, we present a number of potential solutions for the estimation of difficulty under such conditions, and we showcase the results of a comparative study intended to understand which method and which types of data perform better in different scenarios. The results reveal that models trained on a combination of cohort statistics and simulated data produce the most accurate estimations of difficulty in all scenarios. Furthermore, among these models, artificial neural networks show the most consistent results.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_17436
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Difficulty Modelling in Mobile Puzzle Games: An Empirical Study on Different Methods to Combine Player Analytics and Simulated Data
Kristensen, Jeppe Theiss
Burelli, Paolo
Artificial Intelligence
Difficulty is one of the key drivers of player engagement and it is often one of the aspects that designers tweak most to optimise the player experience; operationalising it is, therefore, a crucial task for game development studios. A common practice consists of creating metrics out of data collected by player interactions with the content; however, this allows for estimation only after the content is released and does not consider the characteristics of potential future players. In this article, we present a number of potential solutions for the estimation of difficulty under such conditions, and we showcase the results of a comparative study intended to understand which method and which types of data perform better in different scenarios. The results reveal that models trained on a combination of cohort statistics and simulated data produce the most accurate estimations of difficulty in all scenarios. Furthermore, among these models, artificial neural networks show the most consistent results.
title Difficulty Modelling in Mobile Puzzle Games: An Empirical Study on Different Methods to Combine Player Analytics and Simulated Data
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.17436