Abstract. In this paper, we present a new model to analyse therapeutic games. The goal of the model is to describe and analyse the relations between the three aspects of a therapeutic game: the player, the game, and the therapy. The model is intended to game designers. It is a tool to improve the communication between health experts and game designers, and to evaluate the game design coherency of therapeutic games. It also helps to analyse existing games to discover relevant features. The model is built with respect to existing serious game definitions and taxonomies, medical definitions, motivation theory, and game theory. We describe how the model was used to design le village aux oiseaux, a therapeutic game which goal is to train people with attention disabilities. In the last section, we present the results of analysis done with our model and discuss the model limits.

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Difficulty is one of the major motivational pull of video games, and thus many games use Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA) systems to improve the game experience. This paper describes our research investigating the influence of DDA systems on player's confidence, evaluated using an in-game bet system. Our hypothesis is that DDA systems may lead players to overconfidence, revealed by an overestimation of their success chances when betting. This boost of confidence may be a part of the positive impact of DDA systems on the quality of game experience. We explain our method to evaluate player's confidence and implement it into three games related to logical, motor and sensory difficulties. We describe two experimental conditions where difficulty is either randomly chosen or adapted using a DDA algorithm. Results show how DDA systems can lead players to high level of overconfidence. CCS CONCEPTS • Applied computing → Computer games; Psychology; • Human-centered computing → User studies.

Protein-protein interactions play a crucial role in biological processes. Protein docking calculations' goal is to predict, given two proteins of known structures, the associate conformation of the corresponding complex. Here, we present a new interactive protein docking system, Udock, that makes use of users' cognitive capabilities added up. In Udock, the users tackle simplified representations of protein structures and explore protein-protein interfaces' conformational space using a gamified interactive docking system with on the fly scoring. We assumed that if given appropriate tools, a naïve user's cognitive capabilities could provide relevant data for (1) the prediction of correct interfaces in binary protein complexes and (2) the identification of the experimental partner in interaction among a set of decoys. To explore this approach experimentally, we conducted a preliminary two week long playtest where the registered users could perform a cross-docking on a dataset comprising 4 binary protein complexes. The users explored almost all the surface of the proteins that were available in the dataset but favored certain regions that seemed more attractive as potential docking spots. These favored regions were located inside or nearby the experimental binding interface for 5 out of the 8 proteins in the dataset. For most of them, the best scores were obtained with the experimental partner. The alpha version of Udock is freely accessible at http://udock.fr.

Abstract. In this this paper, we discuss the interest and the need to evaluate the difficulty of single player video games. We first show the importance of difficulty, drawing from semiotics to explain the link between tension-resolution cycles, and challenge with the player's enjoyment. Then, we report related work on automatic gameplay analysis. We show through a simple experimentation that automatic video game analysis is both practicable and can lead to interesting results. We argue that automatic analysis tools are limited if they do not consider difficulty from the player point of view. The last section provides a player and Game Design oriented definition of the challenge and difficulty notions in games. As a consequence we derive the property that must fulfill a measurable definition of difficulty.