Conventional wisdom suggests that while players enjoy unpredictability or novelty during gameplay experiences, they will feel "cheated" if games are adjusted during or across play sessions. In order for adjustment to be effective, it must be performed without disrupting or degrading the core player experience. This paper examines basic design requirements for effective dynamic difficulty adjustment (DDA) given this constraint, presents an interactive DDA system (Hamlet), and offers preliminary evaluation results which challenge common assumptions about player enjoyment and adjustment dynamics.
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Robin Hunicke (2005) studied this question.
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