research-article

Improving the Efficacy of Games for Change Using Personalization Models

Authors:

Regan L. Mandryk,

Julita VassilevaAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), Volume 24, Issue 5

Article No.: 32, Pages 1 - 22

https://doi.org/10.1145/3119929

Published: 06 October 2017 Publication History

Abstract

There has been a continuous increase in the design and application of computer games for purposes other than entertainment in recent years. Serious games—games that motivate behavior and retain attention in serious contexts—can change the attitudes, behaviors, and habits of players. These games for change have been shown to motivate behavior change, persuade people, and promote learning using various persuasive strategies. However, persuasive strategies that motivate one player may demotivate another. In this article, we show the importance of tailoring games for change in the context of a game designed to improve healthy eating habits. We tailored a custom-designed game by adapting only the persuasive strategies employed; the game mechanics themselves did not vary. Tailoring the game design to players’ personality type improved the effectiveness of the games in promoting positive attitudes, intention to change behavior, and self-efficacy. Furthermore, we show that the benefits of tailoring the game intervention are not explained by the improved player experience, but directly by the choice of persuasive strategy employed. Designers and researchers of games for change can use our results to improve the efficacy of their game-based interventions.

Supplementary Material

MP4 File (jrnl1011.mp4)

Download
242.84 MB

References

[1]

Icek Ajzen. 2006. Constructing a TPB questionnaire: Conceptual and methodological considerations. Working Paper, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

[2]

Atif Alamri, Mohammad Mehedi Hassan, M. Anwar Hossain, Muhammad Al-Qurishi, Yousuf Aldukhayyil, and M. Shamim Hossain. 2014. Evaluating the impact of a cloud-based serious game on obese people. Computers in Human Behavior 30 (2014), 468--475.

Digital Library

[3]

Magnus Bang, Carin Torstensson, and Cecilia Katzeff. 2006. The PowerHhouse: A persuasive computer game designed to raise awareness of domestic energy consumption. Persuasive Technology (2006), 123--132.

[4]

Tom Baranowski, Richard Buday, Debbe I. Thompson, and Janice Baranowski. 2008. Playing for real: Video games and stories for health-related behavior change. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. 34, 1 (January 2008), 74--82.

[5]

Richard A. Bartle. 1996. Hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades: Players who suit muds. Journal of MUD Research. 1, 1 (1996), 19.

[6]

Chris Bateman and L. E. Nacke. 2010. The neurobiology of play. In Proceedings of the International Academic Conference on the Future of Game Design and Technology. ACM, 1--8.

Digital Library

[7]

Marek Bell et al. 2006. Interweaving mobile games with everyday life. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 417--426.

Digital Library

[8]

Shlomo Berkovsky, Mac Coombe, Jill Freyne, Dipak Bhandari, and Nilufar Baghaei. 2010. Physical activity motivating games: Virtual rewards for real activity. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, Atlanta, Georgia, 243--252.

Digital Library

[9]

Max V. Birk, Cheralyn Atkins, Jason T. Bowey, and Regan L. Mandryk. 2016. Fostering intrinsic motivation through avatar identification in digital games. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’16). 2982--2995.

Digital Library

[10]

Max V. Birk, Regan L. Mandryk, and Cheralyn Atkins. 2016. The motivational push of games: The interplay of intrinsic motivation and external rewards in games for training. In Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY’16). 291--303.

Digital Library

[11]

Ian Bogost. 2007. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. MIT Press.

[12]

Jason T. Bowey, Max V. Birk, and Regan L. Mandryk. 2015. Manipulating leaderboards to induce player experience. Chi Play (2015), 115--120.

Digital Library

[13]

Ross C. Brownson and Shiriki Kumanyika. 2007. Obesity prevention: Charting a course to a healthier future. Handbook of Obesity Prevention. Springer, 515--528.

[14]

Marc Busch et al. 2015. Personalization in serious and persuasive games and gamified interactions. In Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI Play 2015), 811--816.

Digital Library

[15]

Wynne W. Chin. 2000. Frequently Asked Questions -- Partial Least Squares 8 PLS-graph. Retrieved from http://disc-nt.cba.uh.edu/chin/plsfaq.htm.

[16]

Nathalie Colineau and Cécile Paris. 2011. Can beneficial habits be induced through reflection. Workshop on User Models for Motivational Systems. In Proceedings of User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization, Hawaii.

[17]

Sunny Consolvo, David W. McDonald, and James A. Landay. 2009. Theory-driven design strategies for technologies that support behavior change in everyday life. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, Boston, MA, 405--414.

Digital Library

[18]

Anna B. Costello and Jason W. Osborne. 1994. Denpasar declaration on population and development. Integration. 10, 40 (1994), 27--29.

[19]

Matthew J. C. Crump, John V. McDonnell, Todd M. Gureckis, J. Romero, and S. N. Morris. 2013. Evaluating amazon's mechanical turk as a tool for experimental behavioral research. PLoS One. 8, 3 (March 2013), e57410.

[20]

Ansgar E. Depping and Regan L. Mandryk. 2017. Why is this happening to me? how player attribution can broaden our understanding of player experience. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2017). 1040--1052.

Digital Library

[21]

Ann DeSmet et al. 2014. A meta-analysis of serious digital games for healthy lifestyle promotion. Preventive Medicine (Baltim). 69, August (2014), 95--107.

[22]

Filip Drozd, Tuomas Lehto, and Harri Oinas-Kukkonen. 2012. Exploring perceived persuasiveness of a behavior change support system: A structural model. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Including Subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics). 157--168.

Digital Library

[23]

Lindsay R. Duncan, Kimberly D. Hieftje, Sabrina Culyba, and Lynn E. Fiellin. 2014. Game playbooks: Tools to guide multidisciplinary teams in developing videogame-based behavior change interventions. Translational Behavioral Medicine. 4, 1 (March 2014), 108--16.

[24]

Leon Festinger. 1954. A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations. 7, 2 (1954), 117--140.

[25]

Brian J. Fogg. 2003. Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do. Morgan Kaufmann.

Digital Library

[26]

Yuichi Fujiki, Konstantinos Kazakos, Colin Puri, Pradeep Buddharaju, Ioannis Pavlidis, and James Levine. 2008. {NEAT-o-Games:} blending physical activity and fun in the daily routine. Computers in Entertainment. 6, 2 (2008), 1--22.

Digital Library

[27]

Kathrin Maria Gerling, Regan L. Mandryk, Max Valentin Birk, Matthew Miller, and Rita Orji. 2014. The effects of embodied persuasive games on player attitudes toward people using wheelchairs. In Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors Computing System (CHI’14), April (2014), 3413--3422.

Digital Library

[28]

Claire M. Gillan and Nathaniel D. Daw. 2016. Neuroview taking psychiatry research online. (2016).

[29]

Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini. 2000. Pay enough or don't pay at all*. Quaterly Journal of Economics. 115, 3 (August 2000), 791--810.

[30]

Andrea Grimes, Vasudhara Kantroo, and Rebecca E. Grinter. 2010. Let's play!: Mobile health games for adults. Proceedings of the 12th ACM International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (2010). 241--250.

Digital Library

[31]

Andrew F. Hayes. 2013. Introduction to Mediation, Moderation, and Conditional Process Analysis: A Regression-Based Approach. Guilford Press.

[32]

Ryan Houlette. 2003. Player modelling for adaptive games. In AI Game Programming Wisdom II. Charles River Media, 557--566.

[33]

Invaders. 2014. This is the Official Site of Invader. Retrieved July 1, 2015 from http://www.space-invaders.com/home/.

[34]

John B. Jemmott, Loretta Sweet Jemmott, and Geoffrey T. Fong. 1992. Reductions in HIV risk-associated sexual behaviors among black male adolescents: effects of an AIDS prevention intervention. American Journal of Public Health. 82, 3 (March 1992), 372--377.

[35]

Kirsikka Kaipainen, Collin R. Payne, and Brian Wansink. 2012. Mindless eating challenge: Retention, weight outcomes, and barriers for changes in a public web-based healthy eating and weight loss program. Journal of Medical Internet Research. 14, 6 (January 2012), e168.

[36]

Henry F. Kaiser. 1960. The appliation of electronic computers to factor analysis. Educational and Psychological Measurement. 20 (1960), 141--151.

[37]

Maurits Kaptein. 2012. Personalized persuasion in ambient intelligence. Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments. 4, 3 (2012), 279--280.

Digital Library

[38]

Maurits Kaptein, Boris De Ruyter, Panos Markopoulos, and Emile Aarts. 2012. Adaptive persuasive systems. ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems. 2, 2 (June 2012), 1--25.

Digital Library

[39]

Rilla Khaled. 2008. Culturally-relevant persuasive technology. Pt Des. (2008), 256.

[40]

Rilla Khaled, Pippin Barr, Robert Biddle, Ronald Fischer, and James Noble. 2009. Game design strategies for collectivist persuasion. In Proceedings of 2009 ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Video Games (Sandbox’09). 31.

Digital Library

[41]

Rilla Khaled, Ronald Fischer, James Noble, and Robert Biddle. 2008. A qualitative study of culture and persuasion in a smoking cessation game. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Persuasive Technology for Human Well-Being. Springer, Berlin, 224--236.

Digital Library

[42]

Kristian Kiili. 2005. Digital game-based learning: Towards an experiential gaming model. The Internet and Higher Education. 8, 1 (January 2005), 13--24.

[43]

Phillip King and Jason Tester. 1999. The landscape of persuasive technologies. Communications of the ACM. 42, 5 (1999), 31--38.

Digital Library

[44]

Aniket Kittur, Ed H. Chi, and Bongwon Suh. 2008. Crowdsourcing user studies with mechanical turk. In Proceeding of the Twenty-sixth Annual CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI’08. ACM, New York, NY, 453.

Digital Library

[45]

Debra A. Lieberman. 2001. Management of chronic pediatric diseases with interactive health games: Theory and research findings. Journal of Ambulatory Care Management. 24, 1 (January 2001), 26--38.

[46]

James J. Lin, Lena Mamykina, Silvia Lindtner, Gregory Delajoux, and Henry B. Strub. 2006. Fish'n’Steps: Encouraging physical activity with an interactive computer game. In Proceedings of International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2006). 261--278.

Digital Library

[47]

Regan Lee Mandryk and Max Valentin Birk. 2017. Toward game-based digital mental health interventions: Player habits and preferences. Journal of Medical Internet Research. 19, 4 (2017), e128.

[48]

Winter Mason and Siddharth Suri. 2012. Conducting behavioral research on amazon's mechanical turk. Behaviour Research Methods. 44, 1 (March 2012), 1--23.

[49]

Lennart E. Nacke, Chris Bateman, and Regan L. Mandryk. 2013. BrainHex: A neurobiological gamer typology survey. Entertainment Computing. June (July 2013).

[50]

Harri Oinas-kukkonen and Marja Harjumaa. 2008. Persuasive technology. In PERSUASIVE. Springer, 1--5.

[51]

Rita Orji. 2014. Design for behaviour change: A model-driven approach for tailoring persuasive technologies. Ph.D. thesis, University of Saskatchewan, Canada, 1--257.

[52]

Rita Orji, Regan L. Mandryk, Julita Vassileva, and Kathrin M. Gerling. 2013. Tailoring persuasive health games to gamer type. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’13). ACM, New York, NY, 2467--2476.

Digital Library

[53]

Rita Orji and Karyn Moffatt. 2016. Persuasive technology for health and wellness: State-of-the-art and emerging trends. Health Informatics Journal. 1 (2016), 7--9.

[54]

Rita Orji, Lennart E. Nacke, and Chrysanne DiMarco. 2017. Towards personality-driven persuasive health games and gamified systems. In Proceedings of SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1015--1027.

Digital Library

[55]

Rita Orji, Julita Vassileva, and Regan L. Mandryk. 2012. LunchTime: A slow-casual game for long-term dietary behavior change. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing. 17, 6 (July 2012), 1211--1221.

Digital Library

[56]

Rita Orji, Julita Vassileva, and Regan L. Mandryk. 2014. Modeling the efficacy of persuasive strategies for different gamer types in serious games for health. User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction. 24, 5 (2014), 453--498.

Digital Library

[57]

Wei Peng. 2009. Design and evaluation of a computer game to promote a healthy diet for young adults. Health Communication. 24, 2 (March 2009), 115--27.

[58]

George S. Reynolds. 1975. A Primer of Operant Conditioning. (Rev ed). Oxford, England.

[59]

Richard M. Ryan, C. Scott Rigby, and Andrew Przybylski. 2006. The motivational pull of video games: A self-determination theory approach. Motivation and Emotion. 30, 4 (November 2006), 344--360.

[60]

Danielle N. Shapiro, Jesse Chandler, and Pam A. Mueller. 2013. Using mechanical turk to study clinical populations. Clinical Psychological Science. 1, 2 (2013), 213--220.

[61]

Ross Shegog. 2010. Application of behavioral theory in computer game design for health behavior change. Serious Game Design and Development: Technologies for Training and Learning. (2010), 196--232.

[62]

Susan G. Slater. 2005. New technology device: Glucoboy®, for disease management of diabetic children and adolescents. Home Health Care Management 8 Practice. 17, 3 (April 2005), 246--247.

[63]

Benjamin Stokes. 2005. Videogames have changed: Time to consider “serious games”? The Development Education Journal. 11, 3 (2005), 12--14.

[64]

Khai N. Truong, Gillian R. Hayes, and Gregory D. Abowd. 2006. Storyboarding: An empirical determination of best practices and effective guidelines. In Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS’06). ACM, New York, NY, 12--21.

Digital Library

[65]

Nick Yee, Nicolas Ducheneaut, and Les Nelson. 2012. Online gaming motivations scale: Development and validation. Proceedings of CHI 2012. (2012), 2803--2806.

Digital Library

Cited By

Waki KTsurutani YWaki HEnomoto SKashiwabara KFujiwara AOrime KKinguchi SYamauchi THirawa NTamura KTerauchi YNangaku MOhe K(2024)Efficacy of StepAdd, a Personalized mHealth Intervention Based on Social Cognitive Theory to Increase Physical Activity Among Patients With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled TrialJMIR Research Protocols10.2196/5351413(e53514)Online publication date: 23-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.2196/53514
Tyack AMekler E(2024)Self-Determination Theory and HCI Games Research: Unfulfilled Promises and Unquestioned ParadigmsACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/367323031:3(1-74)Online publication date: 15-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3673230
Daiiani MSweetser PStanley SCaldwell SVan Rooy D(2024)Climate-Oriented Persuasive Edutainment (C.O.P.E.) Model: Player Experience for Effective Climate CommunicationProceedings of the 19th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games10.1145/3649921.3650024(1-14)Online publication date: 21-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649921.3650024
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Improving the Efficacy of Games for Change Using Personalization Models

Recommendations

Personalization in Serious and Persuasive Games and Gamified Interactions
CHI PLAY '15: Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play

Serious and persuasive games and gamified interactions have become popular in the last years, especially in the realm of behavior change support systems. They have been used as tools to support and influence human behavior in a variety of fields, such ...
Towards Personality-driven Persuasive Health Games and Gamified Systems
CHI '17: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Persuasive games and gamified systems are effective tools for motivating behavior change using various persuasive strategies. Research has shown that tailoring these systems can increase their efficacy. However, there is little knowledge on how game-...
Tailoring persuasive health games to gamer type
CHI '13: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Persuasive games are an effective approach for motivating health behavior, and recent years have seen an increase in games designed for changing human behaviors or attitudes. However, these games are limited in two major ways: first, they are not based ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Volume 24, Issue 5

October 2017

167 pages

ISSN:1073-0516

EISSN:1557-7325

DOI:10.1145/3149825

Editor:
Ken Hinckley
Microsoft Research

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2017 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 06 October 2017

Accepted: 01 June 2017

Revised: 01 June 2017

Received: 01 September 2016

Published in TOCHI Volume 24, Issue 5

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed

Funding Sources

GRAND NCE
NSERC

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

99
Total Citations
View Citations
1,755
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)168
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)15

Reflects downloads up to 13 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Waki KTsurutani YWaki HEnomoto SKashiwabara KFujiwara AOrime KKinguchi SYamauchi THirawa NTamura KTerauchi YNangaku MOhe K(2024)Efficacy of StepAdd, a Personalized mHealth Intervention Based on Social Cognitive Theory to Increase Physical Activity Among Patients With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled TrialJMIR Research Protocols10.2196/5351413(e53514)Online publication date: 23-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.2196/53514
Tyack AMekler E(2024)Self-Determination Theory and HCI Games Research: Unfulfilled Promises and Unquestioned ParadigmsACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/367323031:3(1-74)Online publication date: 15-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3673230
Daiiani MSweetser PStanley SCaldwell SVan Rooy D(2024)Climate-Oriented Persuasive Edutainment (C.O.P.E.) Model: Player Experience for Effective Climate CommunicationProceedings of the 19th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games10.1145/3649921.3650024(1-14)Online publication date: 21-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649921.3650024
Daiiani MSweetser PStanley SCaldwell SVan Rooy D(2024)Evaluating the Impact of Gameful Design on Pro-Environmental Attitudes: Beyond Blue as InterventionProceedings of the 19th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games10.1145/3649921.3649933(1-13)Online publication date: 21-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649921.3649933
Gomes Fernandes GSanchez XMartin JRavenet B(2024)Motivational Application for Running: a Participatory Design Approach and the Analysis of Users’ NeedsProceedings of the 35th Conference on l'Interaction Humain-Machine10.1145/3649792.3649802(1-15)Online publication date: 25-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649792.3649802
Sadprasid BMei AMariakakis ABateman SChevalier F(2024)Leveraging Idle Games to Incentivize Intermittent and Frequent Practice of Deep BreathingProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642430(1-17)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642430
Ndulue COrji R(2024)The Impact of Persuasive Framing on the Perceived Effectiveness of a Game for Behaviour ChangeInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2024.2355390(1-15)Online publication date: 28-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2024.2355390
Chen RYan HLiu X(2024)Negative Emotional Value of Players: Exploring the Time Investment Dimension from Chinese Mobile Game Players’ ReviewsInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2024.2346691(1-20)Online publication date: 8-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2024.2346691
Daiiani MSweetser PStanley SVan Rooy DCaldwell S(2024)Gameful interventions for pro-environmental attitude changeInternational Journal of Human-Computer Studies10.1016/j.ijhcs.2024.103439(103439)Online publication date: Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2024.103439
Carman JPsaros MRosenthal SMarlon JVerner MLee SLu DGoldberg MBallew MLeiserowitz A(2024)Geeks versus climate change: understanding American video gamers’ engagement with global warmingClimatic Change10.1007/s10584-024-03747-w177:6Online publication date: 17-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-024-03747-w
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Article

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Figures

Tables

Media

View Issue’s Table of Contents