@article{Cutting:2023,
author = {Cutting, J and Deterding, S and Demediuk, S and Sephton, N},
journal = {Royal Society Open Science},
title = {Difficulty-skill balance does not affect engagement and enjoyment: A pre-registered study using AI-controlled difficulty},
year = {2023}
}

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TY  - JOUR
AB  - How does the difficulty of a task affect people’s enjoyment and engagement? Intrinsic motivation and flow theories posit a ‘goldilocks’ optimum where task difficulty matches performer skill, yet current work is confounded by questionable measurement practices and lacks scalable methods to manipulate objective difficulty-skill ratios. We developed a 2-player tactical game test suite with an AI-controlled opponent that uses a variant of the Monte Carlo Tree Search algorithm to precisely manipulate difficulty-skill ratios. A pre-registered study (n=311) showed that our AI produced targeted difficulty-skill ratios without participants noticing the manipulation, yet different ratios had no significant impact on enjoyment or engagement. This indicates that difficulty-skill balance does not always affect engagement and enjoyment, but that games with AI-controlled difficulty provide a useful paradigm for rigorous future work on this issue.
AU  - Cutting,J
AU  - Deterding,S
AU  - Demediuk,S
AU  - Sephton,N
PY  - 2023///
SN  - 2054-5703
TI  - Difficulty-skill balance does not affect engagement and enjoyment: A pre-registered study using AI-controlled difficulty
T2  - Royal Society Open Science
ER  - 

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