An investigation of the effects of game difficulty on player enjoyment

Motivated by the controversial debates on the subject of static difficulty and dynamic difficulty adjustment (DDA), we investigate the effects different difficulty settings have on different types of players (i.e. casual or experienced). By doing this, we can help to deduce an important question: what difficulty does the player want? An experiment was conducted with 90 participants, each playing the same experimental game exhibiting either static difficulty or DDA mechanics. The results indicate that players enjoy a game more, if the difficulty provided is reflective of their gaming experience, rather than their actual gaming ability. (C) 2012 International Federation for Information Processing Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.