How Could the Use of Game Elements Help Students' Affective and Cognitive Engagement During Game Play?

Researchers have posited different types of engagement, distinguishing between behavioral, cognitive, and affective engagement and theoretical frameworks have helped explain the psychological aspects of engagement. However, game researchers should examine all types of engagement using multiple methodologies as a means to understand what students are learning from educational games during game play. Conclusive results require psychological aspects and learning characteristics to be considered, but also require a deeper understanding of the intricate links between learning and game mechanics for engagement. This article presents the findings from a qualitative study with thirty participants that focuses on the importance of affective and cognitive engagement during game play with educational games. To do this, the researchers used Ferran Alsina, a game that would help to develop learning competences of primary education skills. Researchers obtained the experiences of students through a game play session, basic game metrics, think-aloud protocol, observation and focus groups. Results shows that the game provided participants an active participation associated with both affective and cognitive engagement. Without attention to cognition the atuhors risk losing valuable data that relate to a student's learning. Researchers should consider multiple qualitative methodologies and game play experience analysis as student experiences are qualitative.

Investigating Current Sustainability Issues Through Play and Future Scenarios

The concept of sustainability has started to take place in researches in the current period. At present, where urbanization continues rapidly, the idea of sustainability has become a necessity rather than an option. At this point, it is critical to address these current problems in design education. Sustainability should also take its place in design education. Based on these concepts, a studio structure was created at Istanbul Technical University, Department of Interior Architecture with third-year students as participants in 2021. The project is about the scope of sustainability awareness in future scenarios by teaching children the idea of sustainability. The studio proposes future scenarios with play experience and develops the idea by using scenario-based design as a design methodology. Participants were asked to design a play that creates alternatives to discuss sustainability through their works. Using this potential, the studio aimed to convey the importance of environmental sustainability to new generations in future scenarios.

From Tabletop to Screen: Playing Dungeons and Dragons during COVID-19

Media reports suggest that the tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons saw its biggest year to date in 2020, with many such reports touting the interactive and social benefits for people facing COVID-19 lockdowns. This paper explores the reported challenges and benefits of playing D&D through teleconferencing hardware and software, and the experience of using virtual tabletops. A thematic analysis of a sample of Reddit threads discussing player experiences of transitioning D&D to remote play during COVID-19 social distancing was undertaken. The findings highlight a variety of player attitudes and preferences towards playing D&D remotely. The data suggest a mostly negative sentiment towards playing D&D online for groups that had transitioned from in-person to remote play. Loss of in-person socialisation was identified as an important contributor to a poor play experience, but groups would persevere with remote play to maintain social relationships, suggesting that, for many players, D&D serves an important social function beyond mere play. Some avenues for future research are identified.

Seek What You Need

In Motive Disposition Theory, the affiliation motive describes our need to form mutually satisfying bonds, whereas the power motive is the wish to influence others. To understand how these social motives shape play experience, we explore their relationship to Self-Determination Theory and Flow Theory in League of Legends. We find that: higher intimacy motivation is associated with greater relatedness satisfaction, autonomy satisfaction, enjoyment, and the flow dimension of absorption; higher prosocial motivation with more effort invested and the flow dimension fluency of performance; and higher dominance motivation with lower relatedness satisfaction but higher competence satisfaction and increased flow in both dimensions. We demonstrate that in addition to being driven to satisfy universal needs, players also possess individualized needs that explain our underlying motives and ultimately shape our gaming preferences and experiences. Our results suggest that people do not merely gravitate towards need-supportive situations, but actively seek, change, and create situations based on their individualized motives.

Pathfinder

Designers of instructional software use gamification to help motivate and engage learners. Typically focusing on gamifying a single task, designers aim to provide a straightforward path through learning. In contrast, video games frequently provide optional secondary tasks using collectibles. Collectibles-like coins-are secondary, non-essential goals that encourage players to selectively take on additional challenges and engage more with a game. While research supports the idea that by increasing engagement learning can be improved, exactly how collectibles-an extremely common element in games-might be employed in gamified learning and how it might affect the play experience is underexplored. We present the results of a study comparing a gamified photo-editing training game that uses collectibles to one without collectibles. Our results show that learners choose to engage more when collectibles are present, and that this has a positive effect on software skills applied to a representative out-of-game challenge. Our findings provide a nuanced view of the tradeoffs in motivation and experience when collectibles are used.

A Context-Aware and Immersive Puzzle Game using Machine Learning and Big Data Analysis

Recent years, video games have become one of the main forms of entertainment for people of all ages, in which millions of members publicly show their screenshots while playing games or share their experience of playing games [4]. Puzzle game is a popular game genre among various video games, it challenges players to find the correct solution by providing them with different logic/conceptual problems. However, designing a good puzzle game is not an easy task [5]. This paper designs a puzzle game for players of all age ranges with proper difficulty level, various puzzle mechanics and attractive background setting stories. We applied our games to different players to test play and conducted a qualitative evaluation of the approach. The results show that the pace of puzzle games affects play experience a lot and the difficulty level of the puzzles affects players' feelings to the game.

Active Video Gaming Using an Adapted Gaming Mat in Youth and Adults with Physical Disabilities: Observational Study (Preprint)

BACKGROUND A common leisure-time activity amongst youth and adults in the United States is video game play. Playing video games is typically a sedentary endeavor, however, to encourage an increased level of physical activity in an engaging and enjoyable way active video gaming has become popular. Unfortunately, accessibility of gaming controllers is often an issue for persons with disabilities. To address this issue, a commercial off-the-shelf (OTS) gaming mat was adapted to facilitate use by individuals with mobility impairments. OBJECTIVE To examine energy expenditure, enjoyment, and game play experience in youth and adults with mobility impairment during active video gaming (AVG) using OTS and adapted versions of a gaming mat. METHODS The study used an observational design. During visit 1, physical function was assessed, and participants were given a familiarization period with the gaming system. For visit 2, based on observation during the physical function tests and discussion with the participant, it was decided whether the participant would play in a standing or seated position. For standing game play the mat was placed on the floor and for seated play the mat was placed on a height- and tilt-adjustable tabletop. Metabolic data were collected during a 20-minute baseline and four 10-minute bouts of Wii Fit Plus game play, two bouts on each of the mats (adapted, OTS). During gameplay, research staff observed and rated participants’ ability to use the game controller (mat) and quality of gameplay. At the end of each game set, participants reported their rating of perceived exertion on a scale from 0-10. During rest participants completed the Physical Activity Enjoyment Scale (PACES). Participants also answered additional questions regarding usability of the system with each controller (adapted mat, OTS mat). Statistical analyses were computed using Stata 16. Linear mixed-effects maximum likelihood regression was performed, separately for individuals who were able to play standing and for those who played seated. RESULTS A convenience sample of 78 individuals with mobility impairments between the ages of 12 and 60 years (mean 39.6, SD 15.8) participated in the study. Of the sample, 48 participants played the video games in a seated position, while 30 played the games standing. Energy expenditure and heart rate tended to be higher in the OTS mat condition for seated players, while values were similar for both conditions among standing players. However, seated participants reported greater game play experience and both groups exhibited a higher quality of game play during the adapted mat condition. CONCLUSIONS Active video gaming using an adapted gaming mat provided an enjoyable exercise activity for individuals with mobility impairments. Use of the adapted controller provides a means by which this population can engage in light to moderate intensity active video gaming, thereby reducing sedentary leisure time. CLINICALTRIAL ClinicalTrial: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02994199

A Study on Ways to Improve Mobile RPG Using Big Data Text Mining

As RPG has high sales and profits, lots of developers have supplied various RPG to market but it changed to mass production type with sensational advertising, low quality and excessive charging and similar contents which affects game market and users’ game play experience. The author of this paper studied ways to improve mobile RPG by collecting and analyzing users’ reviews using crawling on Google Play Store. The author of this paper used topic modeling that uses text mining technique and LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) to extract meaningful information from collected big data and visualized it. Inferring users’ reviews, figuring out opinions objectively and seeking ways to improve games are helpful in improving mobile RPG that can be played continuously.