Study On Player Immersion And Difficulty In The Computer Game Narrative

Although the motivation of game designer is to design an immersing game, not enough efforts have been made to do research on the narrative as framework of a computer game. Therefore, the objectives of this study are: 1). Explore the concept of the computer game narrative. 2). Explore which factors have significant impact on player immersion and therefore develop an immersion model for game narrative. 3). explores on how to narrative challenge difficulty and develop a guideline for challenge difficulty design according to the findings.To measure player immersion in a computer game narrative, this study includes three phases. The first phase, review related studies and conceptualize the ideas. The second phase, according to the results of the first phase, develops a model to measure player immersion in a game narrative scenario. To achieve this, a Likert Scale was developed and used in two surveys. Based on the results of the two surveys, this study developed a model with six dimensions to measure player immersion in the game narrative. The six dimensions are Curiosity, Concentration, Challenge, Control, Comprehension and Empathy. To evaluate reliability and validity of the model, two internet surveys were conducted, and data were collected from 634 respondents. Through exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, the dimensions were changed to: Curiosity, Concentration, Challenge and skills, Control, Comprehension, Empathy and Familiarity. The third phase, based on the revised model, some game design guideline were developed.On game difficulty narrative this study finds two key factors - difficulty change mode and difficulty change speed have significant impact. There are three ways to change difficulty modes, up and down, down and up, and continuous increment. The difficulty change speed also includes three types: slowly, medially, and fast. An experiment was conducted to investigate how such two factors impact the game immersion model. Three games were used in this experiment. Each game corresponds to one challenge change speed and three ways to change the challenge. Totally, 48 participants took part in the experiments and each one only played one game. According to the findings in this study, the following recommendations are made: (1) in term of difficulty change mode, UP and Down is the best while Continuous increment follows it. (2) In term of difficulty change speed, medium is recommended. (3)when difficulty change slowly, Down and Up is better than UP and Down; and when difficulty change faster, UP and Down is better than Down and UP.Theoretical and empirical findings in this study provide a solid foundation for the computer game design. And the guidelines developed are helpful for game designer.