Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment for Maximized Engagement in Digital Games

This paper discusses about one of the components of personalized gaming, dynamic difficulty adjustment (DDA). While existing DDA systems have a more greedy/ short term solution, this paper discusses the long term goal of increasing player engagement.

The researchers experimented with a match-3 game, where player progression was represented as a graph, with each state being defined by the current level and the number of attempts the player made at this level. The DDA service determined the most suitable difficulty at a state, with the objective of maximising player engagement. The use of DDA in this game shows improvement in engagement with neutral impact on monetization. You can find the original paper here