An exploratory study of the relationship between objective game difficulty and subjective game difficulty

Abstract

Design issues related to game difficulty in video games have attracted much attention. Although existing studies suggest a discrepancy between subjective game difficulty (SGD) and objective game difficulty (OGD), research exploring this relationship and its impacts on players remains limited. This study investigates whether there is a mismatch between OGD and SGD and their impacts on player enjoyment, engagement, and self-efficacy. A research framework is proposed, accompanied by seven hypotheses for testing. We first determined six dimensions of SGD as a new measuring structure to develop the questionnaire. While OGD is measured by the failure rate, which is a universal method to quantify it. We experimented to validate whether SGDs match OGDs in different OGD conditions in the designed Match-3 game. The three factors of player enjoyment, engagement, and self-efficacy were also measured to assess how the two difficulties affected them. A semi-structured interview was adopted to provide further insight into the experimental results. We found that OGD and SGD only partially match each other and that SGD acts as a mediator between the effects of OGD on player enjoyment, engagement, and self-efficacy. Although preliminary, our findings contribute to a deeper understanding of game difficulty and offer insights for future game difficulty design and human–computer interaction (HCI) research.