Dynamic serious games balancing

Abstract

The user’s interest in a game is difficult to be raised and even more difficult to be maintained. The game must be addictive and correspond to the users’ interest to make sure he/she doesn’t feel attracted to other competing games. Therefore specific, user-adapted mechanisms are necessary to keep their interest and motivation. Dynamic game balancing (DGB) is the process of changing game parameters in real-time, according to the users’ detected ability, in order to provide him/her with a tight fit challenge (neither too easy nor too difficult). A user model must be created for each player, based on data collected before and during game play focusing on interaction statistics and eventually on physiological signals. The use of identical mechanisms adjusted to the objectives of Serious Games implies changes to the design of the DGB methodology. This article presents the main theoretical aspects of this process.