Mechanical Experience, Competency Profiles, and Jutsu

We look at players’ mechanical experience of gameplay challenges. We consider mechanical experience as fundamental design knowledge: designers need to analyze the challenges they craft to understand the skills necessary from their players for success. One application of this study is to explain why some challenges may be inaccessible to certain players. There is currently no comprehensive framework for describing accessibility of challenge experiences. We also propose challenge jutsu, structured representations of challenge descriptions (via competency profiles) and player models, as a first step towards better understanding the mechanical profile of various game challenges and sources of difficulty.