Player Motivation in High-Difficulty Games

- Digital Game Research With Difficulty And Motivation As Variables -

Abstract

Preliminary research (Otsuka, Endo, 2019) suggests that there is a positive correlation between the difficulty of games and the sense of achievement. On the other hand, it has also been shown that high difficulty can be a cause for game dropout (Endo, Mikami, 2020). Therefore, this study focuses on the motivation of players in high-difficulty games and aims to demonstrate a proposal that maintains motivation through the structuring and hierarchization of intrinsic difficulty, revealing methods to provide a sense of achievement at high difficulty levels while preventing game dropout.