ABSTRACT
This chapter explores all the possible game variants to find specific settings for the best player experience was a really time-consuming part of author's job as a game designer. So when the author of the chapter decided to go back to grad school and work on automated game design techniques and computer-aided game design, his first project was to come up with a system that could use artificial intelligence (AI) to explore many game variants and report back the difficulty of each one in a way that matched how human players would feel about the game. The chapter describes the method used to tune game parameters that can be used by everyday game designers without requiring human play testers. It also explores a new game variant; that select parameters from a valid range of reasonable values. The chapter convinces people that using some simple player modelling and human-like AI players can help them to understand the difficulty of their own game.
