Defining gameful experience as a psychological state caused by gameplay: Replacing the term ‘Gamefulness’ with three distinct constructs

Defining gameful experience as a psychological state caused by gameplay: Replacing the term ‘Gamefulness’ with three distinct constructs

Defining gameful experience as a psychological state caused by gameplay: Replacing the term ‘Gamefulness’ with three distinct constructs

Richard N.Landers, Gustavo F.Tondello, Dennis L.Kappen, Andrew B.Collmus, Elisa D.Mekler, Lennart E.Nacke

Abstract

“Gamefulness is commonly cited as the primary goal of gamification, a family of approaches employed in education, business, healthcare, government, and elsewhere. However, gamefulness is defined imprecisely across the literature. To address this, we present a theory of gamefulness that splits gamefulness into more specific constructs and outlines their effects in a process model. We present six resulting propositions: (1) gameful systems lead to gameful experiences, (2) gameful systems impact psychological characteristics, (3) effective gameful design leads to gameful systems, (4) effective gameful systems lead to behavioral change, (5) appropriate behavioral change causes the distal outcomes gamification designers target, and (6) individual differences moderate the effectiveness of gameful systems”.

Reference

Landers, R. N., Tondello, G. F., Kappen, D. L., Collmus, A. B., Mekler, E. D., & Nacke, L. E. (2019). Defining gameful experience as a psychological state caused by gameplay: Replacing the term ‘Gamefulness’ with three distinct constructs. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 127, 81-94. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1071581918304543

Keywords

Gamefulness, gamification, experience