We explore the relationship between a player’s cognitive and motor abilities, and the abilities necessary for completing specific challenges. Existing engineering-focused work does not treat the player on the same footing as the game. We view (the mechanical part of) games as a system of systems composed of the game mechanics (including challenges), and the player via their cognitive and motor abilities.
In particular, we incorporate a player model in the definition of what makes challenges the same. This allows us to define a typology of challenges and of abilities specific to games. Our motivation is to better understand the relation of abilities to the mechanical parts of players’ game experiences, and thence to better craft them. For space reasons, we focus on a subset of challenges and abilities.
Jacques Carette and Sasha Soraine. 2019. Understanding the Player-Game Relationship through Challenges and Cognitive & Motor Abilities. Unpublished. Retrieved June 7, 2022 from https://www.cas.mcmaster.ca/~carette/publications/MotorAbilities.pdf