City Research Online

Abstract

Challenge is arguably the most important experience that players seek in digital games. However, without a measure of how challenged players feel during the act of play, it is hard to design games that are neither too easy nor too hard and, therefore, truly enjoyable. Especially in industry, challenge is dominantly assessed by means of manual play testing in ad-hoc trials. The aim of this research is to create a more systematic, complete, and reliable instrument to evaluate the level of players' experienced challenge in games in the form of a questionnaire. This paper presents the key results from an extensive literature survey which will inform further development. We survey definitions of challenge, challenge types, and their relation to player experience based on the observations of game designers. We furthermore draw from empirical findings in a diverse range of fields such as game studies, human-computer interaction (HCI) and artificial intelligence (AI).

Publication Type:	Book Section
Additional Information:	© 2017, the authors.
Publisher Keywords:	Challenge; Difficulty; Digital Games; Questionnaire; Player Experience; Survey
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
Departments:	School of Science & Technology > Computer Science

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