BIOGRAPHY

Robin Hunicke is finishing her PhD in AI and Games at Northwestern University. In her industry-related work, she strives to build bridges between academics and developers, to promote independent, student and women developers, and to evangelize concrete, directed analysis of games and game design.

In addition to her work with the IGDA's Education Committee and WIGD sig she participates annually in the Indie Game Jam, the Experimental Gameplay Workshop, and the Game Design Workshop at GDC. For more information, see her web site.

ABSTRACT

Game Design Workshop
Workshop, Thursday (10:45 - 12:15) in Hall of Ideas E

This workshop is based a two-day tutorial taught annually at the Game Developers Conference. Attendees will break into small groups to play, discuss, brainstorm and tune a game.

Using the MDA framework, we will analyze a game in terms of its mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics. Then we will re-design this game, concentrating on the connection between player experience and fiction. Through this activity, attendees learn to view games analytically, approaching them as systems which can be analyzed, evaluated and improved.

Idea Takeaway: Attendees leave this workshop with new abstract tools for analyzing and tuning games, and strategies for communicating about these core concepts with others.

ABSTRACT

The Case for Dynamic Adjustment
Individual Presentation, Friday (3:15 - 4:45) in Hall of Ideas G

Games are boring when they are too easy, but frustrating when they are too difficult. To provide the best possible experience for a target audience, game designers iteratively test and tune difficulty settings (easy, medium, hard, insane). Once a game is shipped, these settings are static; they cannot respond to variations in player behavior and performance.

Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA) offers an alternative to this process. With the right algorithms, it is possible to modulate in-game systems at run time, so that they respond to a particular player's abilities over the course of a game session. In this way, DDA systems can broaden the "sweet spot" of gameplay and keep a wider variety of players engaged. However - conventional wisdom suggests we proceed with caution. Players may enjoy unpredictability or novelty during gameplay experiences, but won't they feel "cheated" if games are adjusted during or across play sessions? Can adjustment be performed effectively, without disrupting or degrading the core player experience of a game?

In this talk I will present the results of my dissertation work, exploring the basic design requirements for difficulty adjustment. I will explain my example implementation (Hamlet) and its evaluation results - which challenge common assumptions about player enjoyment and adjustment dynamics.