| Most video games suffer from system inflexibility, which is responsible for the player to give up on the game. As the players are expecting fun produced by different experiences and gaming sessions, the game should be able to adapt itself to the player and meet their expectations. It is important for the player to experience fun as it is what the game industry relies on to keep the player consume their products. Fun is not trivial to define and create, in order to understand fun in game, researchers have been using flow theory that provides a strong understanding of an emotion state that is linked to fun.;It is undeniable that every game should provide the possibility for the player to experience flow, which means it has to provide an understanding of the player' skills so it can adapt the game proposed challenge to their specific abilities. The goal of this research is to address this issue by proposing a new adaptive model for dynamically adjusting, in real-time, the difficulty level of a game in order to enhance the player's experience. This model has been implemented for validation in the form of a simple calculation/combat serious game called Number to Number. An experiment has been conducted with this prototype where 150 playing sessions have been completed by 32 players. Each player had to answer a detailed questionnaire on their playing experience. The results of this experiment were very promising, showing the value of the proposed approach and giving us clues for improving the model. |
