Fostering Intrinsic Motivation through Avatar Identification in Digital
Games
Players' Motivations in Games
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Birk, Max V.
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Atkins, Cheralyn
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Bowey, Jason T.
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Mandryk, Regan L.
Proceedings of the ACM CHI'16 Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems
2016-05-07
v.1
p.2982-2995
© Copyright 2016 ACM
Summary: Fostering intrinsic motivation with interactive applications can increase
the enjoyment that people experience when using technology, but can also
translate into more invested effort. We propose that identifying with an avatar
in a game will increase the intrinsic motivation of the player. We analyzed
data from 126 participants playing a custom endless runner game and show that
similarity identification, embodied identification, and wishful identification
increases autonomy, immersion, invested effort, enjoyment, and positive affect.
We also show that greater identification translates into motivated behaviour as
operationalized by the time that players spent in an unending version of the
infinite runner. Important for the design of games for entertainment and
serious purposes, we discuss how identification with an avatar can be
facilitated to cultivate intrinsic motivation within and beyond games.
The Effects of Social Exclusion on Play Experience and Hostile Cognitions in
Digital Games
Players' Motivations in Games
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Birk, Max V.
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Buttlar, Benjamin
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Bowey, Jason T.
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Poeller, Susanne
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Thomson, Shelby C.
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Baumann, Nicola
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Mandryk, Regan L.
Proceedings of the ACM CHI'16 Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems
2016-05-07
v.1
p.3007-3019
© Copyright 2016 ACM
Summary: The social nature of multiplayer games provides compelling play experiences
that are dynamic, unpredictable, and satisfying; however, playing digital games
with others can result in feeling socially excluded. There are several known
harmful effects of ostracism, including on cognition and the interpretation of
social information. To investigate the effects of social exclusion in the
context of a multiplayer game, we developed and validated a social exclusion
paradigm that we embedded in an online game. Called Operator Challenge, our
paradigm influenced feelings of social exclusion and access to hostile
cognitions (measured through a word-completion task). In addition, the degree
of experienced belonging predicted player enjoyment, effort, and the number of
hostile words completed; however, the experience measures did not mediate the
relationship between belonging and access to hostile cognitions. Our work
facilitates understanding the causes and effects of exclusion, which is
important for the study of player experience in multiplayer games.
Manipulating Leaderboards to Induce Player Experience
Notes! Notes! Notes!
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Bowey, Jason T.
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Birk, Max V.
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Mandryk, Regan L.
Proceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGCHI Annual Symposium on Computer-Human
Interaction in Play
2015-10-05
p.115-120
© Copyright 2015 ACM
Summary: Assessing and inducing player experience (pX) in games user research (GUR)
is complicated because of the tradeoff between maintaining rigour through
experimental control and having participants feel like they are engaged in
play. To establish and evaluate an embedded method for inducing a sense of
success or failure in participants during gameplay (e.g., to study how
different players exhibit resilience to in-game failure), we manipulated
leaderboard position in an experiment in which 155 participants played a
Bejeweled clone. We show that manipulating success perception through
leaderboards increases the player's perception of competence, autonomy,
presence, enjoyment, and positive affect over manipulated failure. In addition,
displaying the score enhances the effect on positive affect, autonomy and
enjoyment, while not increasing detectability.
