Player Manipulation

Video games are capable of giving the players a better entertainment experience due to the interactivity as compared to passive media like movies and books. The overall quality of the entertainment experience is highly dependent on the quality of the game content. Given that video game developers are only able to create a finite set of good quality content for the player to experience and that content that is not experienced does not contribute to the player’s entertainment experience, there is a problem where game developers have to direct the player towards game content and meaningful gaming experiences while not sacrificing the interactivity of the game. In this paper, we propose solutions to this problem by studying manipulation concepts in other areas, classify the concepts into a portfolio of manipulation techniques that can be used in games, and conduct some preliminary experiments, which indicate that an implementation of the techniques is not as simple as one would imagine.