Guillaume Levieux

Measuring the level of difficulty in single player video games

Abstract In this paper, we discuss the interest and the need to evaluate the difficulty of single player video games. We first show the importance of difficulty, drawing from semiotics to explain the link between tension-resolution cycles and challenge with the player’s enjoyment. Then, we report related work on automatic gameplay analysis. We show through a simple experimentation that automatic video game analysis is both practicable and can lead to interesting results. We argue that automatic analysis tools are limited if they do not consider difficulty from the player point of view. The last two sections provide a player and Game Design oriented definition of the challenge and difficulty notions in games. As a consequence we derive the property that must fulfil a measurable definition of difficulty.

How to analyse therapeutic games: the player / game / therapy model

In this paper, we present a new model to analyse therapeutic games. The goal of the model is to describe and analyse the relations between the three aspects of a therapeutic game: the player, the game, and the therapy. The model is intended to game designers. It is a tool to improve the communication between health experts and game designers, and to evaluate the game design coherency of therapeutic games. It also helps to analyse existing games to discover relevant features. The model is built with respect to existing serious game definitions and taxonomies, medical definitions, motivation theory, and game theory. We describe how the model was used to design le village aux oiseaux, a therapeutic game which goal is to train people with attention disabilities. In the last section, we present the results of analysis done with our model and discuss the model limits.

Scaling the Level of Difficulty in Single Player Video Games

In this this paper, we discuss the interest and the need to evaluate the difficulty of single player video games. We first show the importance of difficulty, drawing from semiotics to explain the link between tension-resolution cycles, and challenge with the players enjoyment. Then, we report related work on automatic gameplay analysis. We show through a simple experimentation that automatic video game analysis is both practicable and can lead to interesting results. We argue that automatic analysis tools are limited if they do not consider difficulty from the player point of view. The last section provides a player and Game Design oriented definition of the challenge and difficulty notions in games. As a consequence we derive the property that must fulfill a measurable definition of difficulty.

Dialogs taking into account experience, emotions and personality

This paper describes the DEEP project (Dialogs taking into account Experience, Emotions and Personality, adapted to computer games), which started in June 2006. The aim of the project is to provide generic solutions for the integration of autonomous Non Player Characters (NPCs) in next-generation adventure games. DEEP NPCs, equipped with a personality and a believable emotional engine, will use context-based information from the game environment and the player behavior to provide entertaining, rich and relevant dialogs.

Designing tangible video games: lessons learned from the sifteo cubes

In this paper, we present a collaborative game designed for Sifteo Cubes, a new tangible interface for multiplayer games. We discuss how this game exploits the platforms interface to transfer some of the game mechanics into the non-digital world, and how this approach affects both the players experience and the design process. We present the technical limitations encountered during game development and analyze video recordings of play sessions with regard to the play strategies developed by the players. Then, we identify two properties that this game shares with many other games on tangible platforms and discuss how these properties influence both the game design process and the player experience. We advocate that these properties provide players with more freedom and relatedness, while helping to create an easy-to-learn and customizable gameplay, despite their own design limitations.

Difficulty in videogames: an experimental validation of a formal definition

This paper synthetically presents a reliable and generic way to evaluate the difficulty of video games, and an experiment testing its accuracy and concordance with subjective assessments of difficulty. We propose a way to split the gameplay into measurable items, and to take into account the players apprenticeship to statistically evaluate the games difficulty. We then present the experiment, based on a standard FPS gameplay. First, we verify that our constructive approach can be applied to this gameplay. Then, we test the accuracy of our method. Finally, we compare subjective assessments of the games difficulty, both from the designers and the players, to the values predicted by our model. Results show that a very simple version of our model can predict the probability to the player has to lose with enough accuracy to be useful as a game design tool. However, the study points out that the subjective feeling of difficulty seems to be complex, and not only based on a short term estimate of the chances of success.

Design influence on player retention: A method based on time varying survival analysis

This paper proposes a method to help understanding the influence of a game design on player retention. Using Far Cry® 4 data, we illustrate how playtime measures can be used to identify time periods where players are more likely to stop playing. First, we show that a benchmark can easily be performed for every game available on Steam using publicly available data. Then, we introduce how survival analysis can help to model the influence of game variables on player retention. Game environment and player characteristics change over time and tracking systems already store those changes. But existing model which deals with time varying covariate cannot scale on huge datasets produced by video game monitoring. That is why we propose a model that can both deal with time varying covariates and is well suited for big datasets. As a given game variable can have a changing effect over time, we also include time-varying coefficients in our model. We used this survival analysis model to quantify the effect of Far Cry 4 weapons usage on player retention.

From Objective to Subjective Difficulty Evaluation in Video Games

This paper describes our research investigating the perception of difficulty in video games, defined as players’ estimation of their chances of failure. We discuss our approach as it relates to psychophysical studies of subjective difficulty and to cognitive psychology research into the overconfidence effect. The starting point for our study was the assumption that the strong motivational pull of video games may lead players to become overconfident, and thereby underestimate their chances of failure. We design and implement a method for an experiment using three games, each representing a different type of difficulty, wherein players bet on their capacity to succeed. Our results confirm the existence of a gap between players’ actual and self-evaluated chances of failure. Specifically, players seem to underestimate high levels of difficulty. The results do not show any influence on difficulty underestimation from the players gender, feelings of self-efficacy, risk aversion or gaming habits.

Towards real-time interactive visualization modes of molecular surfaces: examples with udock

In the present work, we describe and discuss two interactive visualization techniques recently added to the Udock software. First, we propose to display a spherical projection of the proteins molecular surface properties. The resulting 2D map allows to get in one glance a global view of the protein. Second, we propose to let the user choose a specific level of detail when visualizing the proteins 3D surface. We describe a simple smoothing algorithm that achieves this goal in real time. These techniques are designed to enhance the usability of molecular visualization and interactive simulation software.

Making sense of emergent narratives: An architecture supporting player-triggered narrative processes

Emergent games have the particularity to allow more possible situations to emerge than progression games do. Coupled with procedural content generation techniques they also tend to increase the number of possible situations that players can encounter., However, in case the player is not creative or lucky enough these many emergent situations can have a low narrative value. This article addresses this problem through an architecture that gives players more responsibilities towards the story by allowing them to trigger Narrative Processes. A Narrative Process is a script capable of making meaningful modifications to the story in real time. Our proposed architecture relies on an Interpretation Engine whose role is to make sense of the emergent world as it is changing and inform the Narrative Processes with high level story concepts such as actors and places., We first cover the basics of emergent games and interactive narratives and then present the architecture behind the Narrative Processes as well as the Interpretation Engine. We conclude by a discussion of the potential impact of our architecture on the fundamental characteristics of emergent games.