Matrix- and Tensor Factorization for Game Content Recommendation

Commercial success of modern freemium games hinges on player satisfaction and retention. This calls for the customization of game content or game mechanics in order to keep players engaged. However, whereas game content is already frequently generated using procedural content generation, methods that can reliably assess what kind of content suits a player’s skills or preferences are still few and far between. Addressing this challenge, we propose novel recommender systems based on latent factor models that allow for recommending quests in a single player role-playing game. In particular, we introduce a tensor factorization algorithm to decompose collections of bipartite matrices which represent how players’ interests and behaviors change over time. Extensive online bucket type tests during the ongoing operation of a commercial game reveal that our system is able to recommend more engaging quests and to retain more players than previous handcrafted or collaborative filtering approaches.