Atari Games Challenge: A Pilot Study on Multimodal Player Experience Assessment

2026-05-26

AI Summary

Effectively evaluating multidimensional player experience—particularly perceived difficulty—remains a significant challenge. This study addresses this issue by simultaneously collecting telemetry data, physiological signals, subjective questionnaire responses, and cued retrospective think-aloud (C-RTA) narratives from 19 participants playing three Atari 2600 games. It presents the first integrative, multimodal framework for assessing player experience in a generalizable manner. Through fusion-based analysis of these heterogeneous data sources, the approach demonstrates strong validity in capturing perceived difficulty. Furthermore, the authors release a high-quality, multimodal dataset to support future research on dynamic difficulty adjustment and game balance, establishing a new empirical foundation for player-centered game design and evaluation.

Abstract

We present a pilot study on the collection and synchronisation of multimodal data for player experience investigation. We collected game telemetry, self-reported surveys, biometrics, and cued-retrospective think-aloud (C-RTA) data from 19 participants playing three Atari 2600 games. The study then uses the data to investigate difficulty in PX, showcasing a protocol for future multimodal research. The dataset obtained from the experiment, which is publicly available, shows potential as a rich, transformative source that can be used to investigate dynamic difficulty adjustment algorithms, game balancing strategies or broader explorations of games user research. The study findings suggest that the experimental approach holds strong potential for generalisation in future player experience studies.

Problem

• player experience
• multimodal data
• game difficulty
• Atari games
• user research

Innovation

• multimodal data
• player experience
• cued-retrospective think-aloud
• dynamic difficulty adjustment
• game telemetry