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Hades Again and Again: A Study on Frustration Tolerance, Physiology and Player Experience

Maj Frost Jensen, Laurits Dixen, Paolo Burelli

TL;DR

The paper tackles the challenge of quantifying player experience by integrating self-report, gameplay, and physiological data to understand how individual differences shape experience in a roguelike game. It employs a 20-participant study in Hades, collecting GEQ core and post-game responses, in-game metrics, and heart-rate data via a Polar sensor, along with BIS/BAS and FNR to estimate frustration tolerance. The analyses reveal that heart-rate dynamics correlate with performance and can moderate the link between performance and perceived competence, while frustration tolerance shows limited direct associations within this setup. The work suggests HR dynamics as a potential tool for player segmentation and interpretation, discusses GEQ limitations, and argues for broader validation across more games and higher-resolution physiological measures.

Abstract

Accurately quantifying player experience is challenging for many reasons: identifying a ground truth and building validated and reliable scales are both challenging tasks; on top of that, empirical results are often moderated by individual factors. In this article, we present a study on the rogue-like game Hades designed to investigate the impact of individual differences in the operationalisation of player experience by cross-referencing multiple modalities (i.e., questionnaires, gameplay, and heart rate) and identifying the interplay between their scales.

Hades Again and Again: A Study on Frustration Tolerance, Physiology and Player Experience

TL;DR

The paper tackles the challenge of quantifying player experience by integrating self-report, gameplay, and physiological data to understand how individual differences shape experience in a roguelike game. It employs a 20-participant study in Hades, collecting GEQ core and post-game responses, in-game metrics, and heart-rate data via a Polar sensor, along with BIS/BAS and FNR to estimate frustration tolerance. The analyses reveal that heart-rate dynamics correlate with performance and can moderate the link between performance and perceived competence, while frustration tolerance shows limited direct associations within this setup. The work suggests HR dynamics as a potential tool for player segmentation and interpretation, discusses GEQ limitations, and argues for broader validation across more games and higher-resolution physiological measures.

Abstract

Accurately quantifying player experience is challenging for many reasons: identifying a ground truth and building validated and reliable scales are both challenging tasks; on top of that, empirical results are often moderated by individual factors. In this article, we present a study on the rogue-like game Hades designed to investigate the impact of individual differences in the operationalisation of player experience by cross-referencing multiple modalities (i.e., questionnaires, gameplay, and heart rate) and identifying the interplay between their scales.
Paper Structure (9 sections, 2 figures)

This paper contains 9 sections, 2 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Work
  3. Methods and Materials
  4. The Game
  5. Protocol
  6. Results
  7. Features Extraction
  8. Analysis
  9. Discussion and Conclusions

Figures (2)

  • Figure 1: Screenshots of the Hades. Top: example of combat with multiple enemies, player is about to lose. Bottom: after losing the player character returns to the beginning again, losing almost all progress from the previous run.
  • Figure 2: Correlation matrix (Pearson's) between the scales from the two questionnaires and the features extracted from the heart rate and game events.