Episode 115 What is Player Engagement?

What is Player Engagement?

Hi and welcome to Experience Points by University XP. On Experience Points, we explore different ways we can learn from games. I’m your host Dave Eng from games-based learning by University XP. Find out more at www.universityxp.com

On today’s episode, we’ll answer the question: What is Player Engagement?

Games require that players interact with them. They require individuals to contribute; to change; and to augment the game according to their own will and agency. This encompasses player engagement and how they come to interact with games as well as what keeps them coming back to play.

This episode will define player engagement and relate it to its roots in understanding player motivation. Player engagement has most to do with the amount of time that players engage with the game and how their investment best relates to the player experience.

That player’s experience is informed by multiple sources. They include interaction and how players augment the game; how players receive and interpret feedback, and how challenges and difficulty are scaffolded and presented to players through games and games-based learning.

Progression, achievement, and frustration of players are important aspects of games that keep players returning. These aspects will be examined in this episode in addition to how game mechanics are designed to maximize player agency as well as give them the tools necessary to proceed and progress within the game.

These tools and ultimate player competencies are informed by tutorials offered by games, hosts, and the game itself. Those tutorials often include the framework for player choices and how they are presented in relation to player expectations.

These choices are discussed in relation to player engagement as well as learner engagement when they are deployed in concert through games-based learning. These are described and discussed in detail in the final sections of this episode which cover the different types of player engagement and how they affect the player experience.

These different types of player engagement include cognitive engagement, behavioral engagement, emotional engagement, cultural engagement, physical engagement, and finally social engagement.

Player Engagement Defined

Different designers, players, learners, and educators can express and discuss engagement in different ways. For the purposes of this episode, we will refer to player engagement as the level of interaction, enjoyment, and immersion that players experience when playing games.

Additionally, player engagement also encompasses how the player experience is informed by the range of emotions, feelings, and sentiments that players feel when they are playing a game. These emotions and feelings can be capitalized by game designers to engender further play in the game. This is represented when players continually return to play and interact with the game over a prolonged period of time.

This continual process of interaction is often emulated in applicable and transformative learning experiences as represented with learner engagement. Actively engaged learners fully and immersivly engage with content; participate and interact willingly; and become fully invested in collaborative spaces.  Such learners do not only consume content. Rather, they become part of the experience that content provides.

Often the highest forms of player engagement are represented in video games where individuals are provided the structures and opportunities for players to engage at multiple levels through formal game elements. Those game elements are implemented through rewards, obstacles, and progressive challenges that continually provide reinforcement for the learner experience. Overall, including these elements in games makes the player experience and engagement both transformative and positive.

Therefore, it’s important to examine and interpret player engagement as a critical element to a game’s success as it contains a mix of players’ emotions and agency as they become further invested and involved in the game.

Motivation and Player Engagement

The heart of engagement is based on players’ motivation. The right type and leverage of player motivation is one of the most critical aspects to take into consideration for educational and serious game design. Doing so provides the structure and groundwork for both short and long term of player investment into the game.

The same can be said about learner engagement. Appealing to the appropriate type of motivation gets learners invested in their learning. Therefore, designs should utilize the formal elements of games; game components; and game mechanics that get players to first engage and continue playing the game.

This is because the most engaging and successful games are those that derive excellent experiences that leverage intrinsic motivation from players. That motivation is often driven deeply by what learners gain from the experience. That can include greater exploration for the narrative of the game; achievement of difficult challenges; socializing with other players and characters; as well as competing against them to defeat them.

These motivations are best leveraged when developed in concert with the lusory agreement of games and the “magic circle.” It’s the magic circle that allows the players to suspend disbelief about the rules, structure, framework, and logic of the game and commit wholeheartedly towards using those frameworks for their own success. The agency that these frameworks provide motivate players to continue playing and investing their time and effort into the game.

Therefore, the most successful games contain an artful blend of intrinsic activities that appeal to these motivations as well as scaffolding which helps players utilize their agency to achieve competency within the game. This agency is built on players autonomy to take individual actions and benefit from their effects inside the game. The same can be said for autonomous learners where they have the agency and power to determine what they are doing and how they pursue doing it.

Ultimately both player engagement and learner engagement rely on and utilize self-determination theory to fully engage individuals. This is accomplished through a utilization of three different areas of intrinsic motivation: players autonomy, mastery & competency; and purposeful choice.

Time Investment and Player Engagement

Player engagement is best described as a player’s investment of time within the game. This can take place over multiple time horizons including short-term, mid-term, and long-term investment.

Short term investment prioritizes players to complete clear and present challenges within the game. This often includes tactical moves for real-time strategy games (RTS) as well as individual players’ moves and actions in tabletop games. In whole, these short-term engagements are based on the core loop of gameplay for the player.

These short, repetitive, and frequent activities are also represented in learner engagement through applications of microlearning. Here, learners focus on bite-sized chunks of materials and their requisite assessments to engage the learner in one small activity at a time that leads to larger gains in outcomes and accomplishments.

Successful short-term investment for players leads to mid-term investments which motivate the player to complete a discrete chunk of gameplay or content. This could include various units such as chapters, levels, and missions in video games as well as round and phases in tabletop games. Player engagement achieved here bridges the gap between short-term core loop engagement and long-term player engagement.

Finally, long-term player engagement motivates the player to complete and finish the game. These can be accomplished in step with actions, activities, and assessments which evaluate and challenge individuals throughout game play. However, summative assessment often represents the pinnacle of achievement for players. These summative assessments for learning often include final exams, projects, or presentations. In video games they are represented by mid and end level boss fights as well as intermediate and final scoring rounds for tabletop games.

Appealing to players motivations through short-term; mid-term; and long-term engagement encourages players to dedicate and invest time in the game. Doing so with educational games help individuals also achieve the specified learning outcomes of the game.

Player Experience and Engagement

Motivation is an important and critical aspect of player engagement. This is because motivation directly informs and relates to the overall player’s experience of the game. Often these are based on “hooks” on what gets player originally playing the game as well as further points that keep the player engaged.

Commercial games offer player hooks by addressing a need to entertain oneself and pass the time. This works well for games designed for entertainment; but educational and serious games have the added responsibility of engaging skeptical learners as well as motivating individuals to continue playing and ultimately achieve specific learning outcomes.

Therefore, many educational game designers often rely and focus on the aspect of fun for gamers for engagement. This works well for commercial games for entertainment; but should be used sparingly for educational games. That’s because “fun” activities can serve as a good hook for the player. But they shouldn’t overshadow the more formal elements of serious games that directly address stated learning outcomes.

Of course, learners from a professional, organizational, or occupational background may continue learning through serious games because they are required to. However, without addressing critical levels of interest and engagement, they are not likely to carry and apply what they have learned outside of the educational environment.

This means that adult learners – particularly in corporate environments – need to also know the relevance of such serious games for their own roles within the organization as well as how they can use their experiences to improve their own responsibilities and ultimately their career. Doing so ensures that they apply the experience seriously and are adequately invested in the activity of learning and development.

Such connection to relevance and competency feed player engagement. This is often occurs at the pinnacle level through the achievement of “flow state” for learners where they have become so engrossed in the activity that time seems to blur. This is accomplished when learners’ motivation and competencies are challenged accordingly and within the zone of proximal development. Here, they are not provided insurmountable challenges, nor dismissible obstacles, but are instead performing at the peak of their abilities.

Interaction, Feedback, and Player Engagement

This flow state in learners is achieved through the purposeful design of interaction and feedback and how it affects player engagement. Simple feedback loops in games provide players with prescriptive and directive feedback for how they should continue to play. As such, this core feedback loop addresses short-term player engagement.

Short- term player engagement here is often enough to occupy learners with games-based learning so long as they can demonstrate agency, competency, and autonomy within the game environment. Doing so is important because individuals require a specific level of freedom to play the game that isn’t prescriptive. Rather, they must be given a choice for how they want to play, and continue to play.

Designers may choose to reduce or limit players own agency and achievement in the game – but at their own peril. While this choice might make sense for the beginning of the game when players are still learning basic competencies for how to play and succeed; it should not be limited to later game stages. That is because the form of immediate feedback provided to players provides a critical level of reinforcement for game activities and learning which directly influences player engagement.

Challenges and Difficulty in Player Engagement

Both challenges and difficulty play a critical part in keeping both players and learners engaged. The optimal state is one where they won’t become frustrated, overwhelmed, or bored. This is often represented through the flow state in games. It is a mindset where someone becomes so engrossed in an activity that they do not experience the passage of time.

Such a state requires that players be challenged – but at the correct level. Games and learning must be sufficiently difficult where they require effort, perseverance, and problem solving so that there is a sense of accomplishment when completed. Likewise, they can’t be so difficult that players become frustrated and give up. Rather, both excellent games and excellent instructors adjust to facilitate the engagement of new players and learners so that their determination is encouraged and their wins earned.

Thus, with learning, it is to the advantage of the educator to develop some kind of skill or tangible rewards or takeaway for the learner. This represents a form of accomplishment that an individual can aim for. Games often accomplish this by using some kind of in-game reward or currency. Doing so rewards players by helping them play the game better and at a more challenging pace that keeps up with their newly developed skills. This is often observed in games with action systems where skills and challenges are progressively balanced against players’ competencies.

Balancing games in this way is even more challenging when considering the skills and competencies of other players as they represent a value that is not always known to the educator. Therefore, it is important for both designers and educators to curate and match players of the same or similar skill set to provide the adequate amount of challenge for players.

Similarly, designers and educators can also augment the environment and change the style of play for more skilled players. Doing so ensures that these more advanced individuals are challenged at an appropriate level and don’t negatively affect the engagement of more novice players. In education this is seen by offering educational content and outcomes that are structured differently and cater to more advanced individuals.

Conversely, designers can also balance the player’s experience by either helping the weaker player with a handicap or disadvantaging the stronger player. There are many ways in which this can be accomplished that are beyond the scope of this episode. However, some of the most popular are starting score or resource deficits or advantages for advanced versus novice players.

Perhaps, the best way to balance the player’s experience for differing competency levels is to dynamically adjust the game or learning environment based on the needs of individual players. Compared to static adjustments, dynamic adjustments provide players with new relevant goals and achievements that better accommodate players’ autonomy.

Progression, Achievement, and Frustration in Player Engagement

Challenges and difficulties for players and learners alike directly inform how individuals progress and achieve within games and learning environments. As was previously mentioned, achievements and rewards can often encompass in-game items such as currencies that provide players with a sense of scale, achievement, and competency within the game.

These represent one such way in which progress is commodified in games. But perhaps the more necessary outcome is not what you use to commodify progress; but the importance around recognizing and rewarding it. For, doing so ensures that player engagement remains high and relevant for individuals. This is even more important for long-term player engagement as it provides relevancy and connectedness for individuals to continue engaging in the long-term.

You can determine how players progress in your game or learning environment by analyzing your system or course to determine, how, when, and why individuals invest themselves and how progress is recognized. This is most easily observed in video games where players can see how rewards and currencies that players acquire change and augment the way that they play the game. Therefore, designers can use in-game rewards as a way for them to promote certain player motivations.

Some of the most common game currencies are represented in points, levels, and status. Similarly, these are also represented as gamified assets in loyalty programs for different companies and credit cards which also seek the same long term individual engagement from their customers.

Despite whatever currency the designer chooses to use to reinforce player progression, they must do so in a clear, communicable and regularly reinforced way to maintain player engagement.  This aids in the transparency in the player engagement progress where frustration is focused on actual player challenges and not on how they are recognized for surmounting such challenges.

Game Mechanics and Design in Player Engagement

Challenges, difficulty, progression, and achievement are experienced by players in games through the application of game mechanics. Various game mechanics can be applied to motivate players to continue to engage as well as increase retention. However, mechanics still represent tools for designers, developers, and educators. Through their appropriate use, they can create strong, engaging, and enjoyable experiences for players and learners alike.

Some of the most common mechanics that are used in games reinforce player behavior through points. Those points can take the form of different players currencies that serve as rewards for challenges. Points can be gained by players for engaging in the core loop or core game mechanic that is dependent on the specific outcome of the game.

While not all mechanics relate to game play elements, they remain critical parts of the end user’s experience. Some of those mechanics allow players to adjust and change the cosmetics of the game as well as playing the game using alternative characters and avatars. Doing so provides players with the means of revisiting certain parts of the game again through the lens and bias of another character or player.

This is especially beneficial when using simulations for teaching and learning as the same scenario can be revisited several different times with varied objectives and outcomes in mind. The results of which provide players with viewpoints that vary from their own.

All these factors combined help to connect outcomes to components and mechanics. The results of which are often enjoyable games that further promote player engagement.

Tutorials and Guides for Player Engagement

Perhaps one of the most common scenarios that inform player engagement is the tutorial at the start of the game. This can come in many forms from live game hosts and in-game walkthroughs. No matter how they are deployed, they remain structural components of player on-boarding before they begin playing the game.

Player tutorials are meant to demonstrate for the player the core competencies necessary to begin play. These are important milestones for players to achieve during their player journey as well as for them to become and remain engaged in the game.

This is especially important for complex games that are often targeted towards the hobbyist or hardcore player demographic. This is necessary as a means of establishing and promoting resilient player engagement. However, for simpler games, this is often not the case, as these kinds of games don’t require the same level of in-depth overview as more complex ones.

Often this is observed through experiential learning through game play. Especially with games with short core loops that can be learned through trial-and-error as well as experimentation. In these scenarios, it often makes more sense for players to begin playing the game rather than providing an in-depth overview and detailed tutorial prior to play.

Player Choices and Expectations for Engagement

One of the most consistent areas necessary for improvement of player engagement is the breadth and scope of choices for players. These choices should support self-determination theory by promoting player autonomy, competency, and relatedness. In all, these choices should meet the players’ expectations for what they intend to achieve from the experience.

This also relates to learners’ experiences as determining what they want and what they intend to accomplish is key to development of relatedness in individual choice. This is critical for mastery as learners need to know what they need to do, and accomplish to be successful.

Therefore “learner control” and “player engagement” go hand in hand in determining how successful and engaged individuals are. Specific configurations of formal game structures, goals, objectives, achievements, and rubrics go far in determining how individuals perceive the learning and play environment.  Therefore, a balance must be struck by designers and educators alike when designing serious game mechanics that challenge and support learners while also providing them the agency to make autonomous and interesting choices with constraints.

This is often where games excel as they provide players with a set of actions and choices provided in a structured and rule-based environment. Some games go further in providing a “sandbox” for players to explore whereas others are designed as highly prescriptive of what players can and cannot do. The same can be said for learning environments which can be equally open or constrained. The ideal environment is not one extreme or the other; but the one that caters most closely to the need and abilities of the individual player.

While game choices can affect and influence the player’s environment in many ways, player choices don’t need to always be so consequential. Instead, options can provide players with the ability to make cosmetic or aesthetic choices in games. While these may not have a critical impact on the game state; they go far into augmenting the player experience and engender greater player engagement.

What is Learner Engagement?

Player engagement focuses on individual players’ introduction, engagement, and eventual retention within games. However, what is “Learner Engagement?” Learner engagement shares many of the same characteristics of player engagement. However, learner engagement involves individuals’ cognitive and emotional energy to accomplish an educational task. Catering to such outcomes helps learners achieve educational outcomes, academic achievement, scholarly persistence, student satisfaction, and community development to name a few.

Subsequently, learner engagement also promotes attention, interest, optimism, curiosity, and passion for learning and as a process for attainment and achievement. Much of the same way that games promote intrinsic motivation of players that is fueled by individual desires not based on external factors. Therefore, both player engagement and learner engagement focus on whether sufficient individual motivation has been catered to help players and learners invest themselves into the experience.

Player engagement in serious games can be leveraged to promote academic engagement to help individuals become more present, attentive, and invested in accomplishing stated learning objectives. Such investment also promotes individuals’ curiosity, interest, and passion for engagement in learning endeavors.

Such engagement can be accomplished in learning environments when both serious game developers as well as educators prioritize strategies which cater to specific characteristics of learners. Those characteristics include developmental, intellectual, emotional, behavior, physical, and social factors that enhance individuals’ investment and engagement.  

As a result, engaged learners make a full investment into learning activities that encompasses pride in accomplishments for what they’ve learned and skills that they’ve developed as a result. This often takes place when learners interact and cooperate with their peers, classmates, and instructors in the learning environment.

Therefore, a more succinct way of summarizing learner engagement is the promotion of a successful learning experience for both learners and instructors alike. This often comes from serious games that promote learning through an iterative and experiential process.

This means that learner engagement should be a top consideration for both educators and serious game developers. Given that successful learner engagement enhances individuals’ abilities to retain new knowledge as well as observe consequences for the application of outcomes to opportunities outside of the learning environment.

Games-Based Learning and Player Engagement

A specific area where both player engagement and learner engagement can be combined is games-based learning. This is where games are used as a medium for teaching and learning. Thus, there is some overlap between engaged players and engaged learners. The result of which is that games can act as both catalysts and primers for deeper learning engagement by providing a setting where outcomes can be demonstrated in a format which prioritizes individuals’ agency.

Both applied games-based learning and gamification can be used to aid in individuals learning and engagement. That is because the same concepts that makes games interesting can be utilized to engage individuals to apply what they have learned in different settings.

This is best achieved when both the game’s mechanics and the specific learning outcomes and activities are intertwined in a way where the learner must apply and experiment by putting learned knowledge into practice.  This is why simulations and scenarios are popular choices for learning and development because they offer a practical method for simulating how learners may use new knowledge in the field.

This close juxtaposition of learning activities, experimentation, and games-based learning provides a framework where learners have maximum agency in developing ways in which they can solve problems using their acquired or developed knowledge. Therefore, this makes games-based learning a useful and applicable tool for educational outcome attainment that can be applied at almost any educational level.

Types of Player Engagement

Both player and learner engagement share many of the same characteristics. One major aspect that is included for both sides is the different ways that both learners and players can be engaged.

Often this occurs through both learning and play when individuals are provided the necessary information and structure to develop base competencies. Those competencies are then applied through the game or the learning environment where they are recognized through the accomplishment of objectives, goals, and achievements.

Both learner and player engagement require that the individual take on an active role in the process. Passivity is not a welcome model for maximum and impactful engagement. Therefore, learning and progression most often occurs when there are opportunities for individuals to take active, determined, and purposeful action in service of learning outcomes.

This type of active participation occurs in the following six types of engagement. They include cognitive, behavioral, emotional, cultural, physical, and social player engagement.

Cognitive Player Engagement

Cognitive engagement is shared by both players and learners alike. It focuses on attention, memory, and general problem solving. These can most clearly be seen in games that include some kind of problem-solving element, logical deduction, or spatial reasoning.

Relatedly, learners can be engaged cognitively when there is intrinsic interest and motivation into the curiosity of a topic. This level of interest is important for ensuring that learners are active and committed towards the pursuit and completion of the learning outcomes for the environment. This is often demonstrated when learners make a concerted and united effort towards those outcomes and persist towards its completion.

Therefore, both players and learners can be motivated cognitively when there is a cycle for active and positive reinforcement through their work where they both attain new knowledge as well as demonstrate their competency. This can be seen in games where players execute base level efficacy in game mechanics as well with learners when they can apply what they’ve learned experientially.

Behavioral Player Engagement

Both players and learners can also be engaged through their individual behaviors. This is seen in game play by observing when players take actions incentivized by designers within the game.  This is often seen in games through level design which provides paths for players to take and follow that incentivize certain directions over others. Players are given the agency to take any route that they wish; but some routes offer certain rewards and feedback compared to others.

The way that game mechanics are developed and deployed for serious games are done so to encourages specific psychological and behavioral drives. This is seen in different player types such as with Bartle’s Player Taxonomy with “Explorers.” Explorers are incentivized to explore areas and different offerings of a game. Therefore, serious games can be designed in ways that provide ample opportunities to explore, find, and discover these areas on their own.

Behavioral player engagement is also reflected in behavioral learner engagement. That is when learners invest personal effort into completing a learning task as well as their ability to follow instructions within the confines of that task. This is often seen in learners’ engagement of different assessments in learning environments. It could also be reflective of how serious games structure and propose different player objectives, mission, and goals for players to pursue and accomplish.

Emotional Player Engagement

Emotional player engagement and learner engagement differ slightly in application. Emotional engagement for players refers mainly to their internal feelings and emotions when they are playing a game. As such, these feelings are highly subjective and vary greatly and widely from player to player. This also means that players engage emotionally with games based on the type, kind, and depth of experience they have playing them.

These experiences can be new and novel when players experience a game for the first time.  They can likewise also be nostalgic as more experienced players return to a game that they played years ago during the formative moments of their gaming careers. In both circumstances, learning and serious game designers can focus their approach on choices that form and evoke strong emotional responses from players. Those responses could then be leveraged to increase overall engagement and investment in the game.

These could further be connected to learners’ emotional engagement when learning content (such as with serious games) involve various narrative elements such as storytelling, character, development, and analogy through moral character choices. Such elements are already included in many in-depth role-playing games. Therefore, they can be connected to learning outcomes in a more holistic application of games-based learning.

Therefore, the most promising learning games are those that engage players in various respects. That includes cognitively through a practical and applicable content-based approach as well as an emotional and relational one.

Cultural Player Engagement

While emotional player engagement may be more difficult to target because of subjective player experiences and backgrounds; cultural player engagement provides a more contextual approach for educators and designers. This is because cultural learner engagement has to with how the training or outcomes of learning relates to and reflects an organizational or institutional culture.

Similarly, cultural player engagement also includes how players interact with the game within a specific cultural context. This could include societal expectations or normative behaviors that form the basis of players’ lived experience. Such discussion is beyond the scope of this episode - but still provides the context necessary for how culture informs and determines how players engage with games.

Therefore, if learning game designers are creating serious games for specific populations, they can do so within the realm of that group’s cultural values, traditions, and themes. Doing so would ensure that the learning game content is received and interpreted in line with the expectations of learners.

Practically, this can be accomplished by designers incorporating elements from the player’s cultures into gameplay, narratives, as well as different aesthetics within the game. Doing so means the creation of compelling game elements serve not only a structural purpose within the game, but a contextual, and cultural one as well.

This means that knowing how to design, develop, and implement interactive narratives within the frameworks of learning games further promotes the agenda for creating useful educational interactive media.

Physical Player Engagement

There is somewhat of a disconnect between player and learner engagement when it comes to physicality. That’s because of the different aims and objectives of games verses learning content. Should the specific outcomes of the content contain some degree of physicality then physical engagement is important. Specifically, when it addresses a kind of kinesthetic activity like with exercise, stretching, or training related movement.

For many games this includes some kind of physical and active interaction such as with dexterity games and sports. It can even include physical movements in a digital world that are captured through specific sensors. XBOX’s Kinect; accelerometer in Wiimotes; and the controllers to both the Oculus and HTC Vive all help players interact physically with a virtual world.

This means that not all learning content, commercial games, or learning games require the same level or presence of physicality. It can be a welcome inclusion if the content references and requires it; but that is not always the case. However, some serious games necessitate physical movement such as when used with occupational therapy; physical therapy; or therapeutic recreation. Such applications can be employed to evaluate both players’ movements as well as their own spatial awareness.

Ultimately the inclusion of physical engagement for learners or players will be dependent on the specific aims and outcomes of the designer, educator, or instructor. The role of physical engagement is to create a more immersive and interactive experience where the lines between the early and imagined world in the magic circle are blurred. Such blurring provides individuals with a deeper level of involvement in gameplay by relational learning. The consequences of which enhance their presence and agency in the game. Thus, making the experience more engaging for individuals.

Social Player Engagement

The area that both players and learners share the most common characteristics are through social engagement. This is often seen in games when players engage with one another as a means of interacting with others and as the basis of social experiences.

The creation of this social engagement does not include only learners. The development of positive social relationships between educators and students can also aid in the development of a positive learning environment. The relationships for learners can be developed further with adult learners who are able to bring their own work and life experiences into learning. The results of which are the development of greater relevancy of their learning to their everyday activities.

This outcome can be combined between games and learning with games-based learning when individuals are structured to work with one another. Increased student engagement in both collaborative and cooperative environments help keep students’ engagement and motivation to learn. These kinds of in-kind social exchanges encourage variable factors such as trust and fairness across relationships which help develop both formal and informal learning networks.

The creation of these learner networks also increases individuals’ participation through means of active feedback, iterative improvement, and emotional support for each other. Isolated learners are provided the structure through this social construct to interact and engage with one another through social engagement.

Social player engagement can be leveraged in serious games and learning games as a means to form and determine how players will interact and communicate with one another through the consumption of learning content. The method by which this takes place can vary. For competitive interactions features such as leaderboards and point systems help differentiate the success of players compared to each other. Whereas other more collaborative frameworks such as support roles for role-playing games help emphasize how and when players assist in achieving a common goal through indirect activities.

Takeaways

This episode examined the term player engagement and what it means for players, learners, and games-based learning. Player engagement was defined as well as how it relates to motivation of individuals. Time investment into games was covered, as well as how the overall structure of games affects and influences the player’s experience.

The player experience was covered as a means of better understanding how players engage with games via interaction, feedback, challenges, difficulty, progression, achievement, and frustration. All these considerations were examined in relation to game mechanics and game tutorials as part of the game design process.

Player choices and expectations were reviewed as part of the player engagement process and the different elements and how they relate to overall learner engagement. Both were examined as they relate to games-based learning. The results of which are a combined list of different types of player engagement shared across both players and learners alike.

Those different types of player engagement included cognitive engagement; behavioral engagement; emotional engagement; cultural engagement; physical engagement; and social engagement.

I hope you found this episode useful. If you’d like to learn more, then a great place to start is with my free course on gamification. You can sign up for it at www.universityxp.com/gamificationYou can also get a full transcript of this episode including links to references in the description or show notes. Thanks for joining me!

Again, I’m your host Dave Eng from games-based learning by University XP. On Experience Points we explore different ways we can learn from games. If you liked this episode please consider commenting, sharing, and subscribing.

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Eng, D. (2019, October 01). Flow State. Retrieved October 10, 2023, from https://www.universityxp.com/blog/2019/10/1/flow-state

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Cite this Episode

Eng, D. (2023, October 17). What is Player Engagement? Retrieved MONTH DATE, YEAR, from https://www.universityxp.com/blog/2023/10/17/what-is-player-engagement

Internal Ref: UXP4ODQQPGI2