Investigating Game Mechanics that Target Players' Self-Control While Maintaining Engagement
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Date
2018-10-23
Authors
Soroush, Milad
Hancock, Mark
Bohns, Vanessa K.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ACM
Abstract
Whenever someone chooses to study instead of going to a party, or forgo dessert after dinner, that person is exercising self-control. Self-control is essential for achieving long-term goals, but isn't easy. Games present a compelling opportunity to engage in tasks that allow a player to exercise and improve self-control, and consequently provide data about a person's cognitive capacity to exert self-control. However, exercising self-control can be effortful and depleting, which makes incorporating it into a game design that maintains engagement and quality of experience a challenge. We present the design of game mechanics for exercising and improving self-control, and an initial study that effectively demonstrates that games can be designed to engage a broad level of self-control processes without negatively affecting player engagement and experience. Our results also show that player performance is connected to trait-level self-control. We discuss how (for example) players with low trait self-control can therefore be identified, and games intended to improve or exercise self-control can dynamically adapt to this information.
Description
© {Owner/Author | ACM} 2018. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in Proceedings of the 2018 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3242671.3242698.
Keywords
games, cognitive control, self-control improvement, self-control