Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment in a Multiplayer Minecraft Server

Abstract

Minecraft has given rise to diverse gameplay, including public servers that provide survival gameplay combined with Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game elements. In these servers, gameplay includes many players fighting mobs (non-player enemies) together. However, it often happens that some players are experienced, while others are not. This leads to a problem where some players enjoy the level of challenge and consequently the game, while others can feel bored or discouraged. This paper proposes an approach to Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA) that adjusts mobs in multiplayer Minecraft so that the difficulty level accommodates all players involved. We present a new Multiplayer Minecraft DDA Framework, a game design to populate our framework, and a user evaluation study to test our framework. Our work contributes to understanding DDA in multiplayer contexts and to creating better multiplayer experiences for Minecraft and other multiplayer games.