Keywords

Achievements, badges, narrative, medulla, serious games, games, video game, learning, engagement, intrinsic motivation, dialogue, animation, brain, brain regions, motivation, sidescroller, side scroller, two dimensional games, undergraduates

Abstract

Game design is a rigorous practice rife with complexity. The design of learning games is similarly complex to the design of their entertainment-based relatives. This complexity is partially due to the many interacting components that comprise games. The impacts of these individual components are not well understood. Advancing the understanding of how such component parts contribute to the formed game will inform decisions related to their inclusion and subsequent design within games. Achievements and narrative are two such components. They have been examined within gamified systems, but little research has studied them within the context of a serious game. The interactions between such elements and other game elements could produce results that diverge from the results of their use in isolation of a complete gaming framework. This dissertation selectively incorporates or excludes narrative and achievements within a two-dimensional platformer serious game to understand their impact on learning, flow, engagement, narrative transportation, and intrinsic motivation. Conditions are examined individually as well as in a combined condition. A control condition is maintained for comparison. Results indicate that narrative and achievements were not effective in improving the effectiveness of the game. Potential causes are discussed in tandem with the implications for the design and integration within a gaming framework. While the manipulations did not improve effectiveness, the game was responsible for substantially increased knowledge acquisition, as determined by pre and posttest results.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2014

Semester

Fall

Advisor

McDaniel, Rudy

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

College

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Degree Program

Modeling and Simulation; Engineering

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0005490

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0005490

Language

English

Release Date

December 2014

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access)

Subjects

Dissertations, Academic -- Engineering and Computer Science; Engineering and Computer Science -- Dissertations, Academic

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Included in

Engineering Commons

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