Modelling Core Personality Traits Behaviours in a Gamified Escape Room Environment

This paper proposes using a series of five 3D escape rooms, built in the Unity engine, to assess the Big Five (OCEAN) personality traits through observed in-game behaviour rather than self-report questionnaires. The authors argue that questionnaires are vulnerable to subjectivity and self-report bias, whereas gamified environments can record objective metrics such as mouse clicks, time to solve puzzles, walking speed, patience while waiting, and the order in which players collect and place items. Each room is themed around one trait: a piano-and-music-sheet puzzle for Openness, a recipe and jigsaw task for Conscientiousness, a crowded party with non-player characters for Extraversion, a cooperative game choice for Agreeableness, and a storm-induced power cut and fire for Neuroticism. Because behaviours overlap across traits, the final profile combines metrics from all five rooms.

The study's central contribution is conceptual and design-oriented. The authors map specific behaviours in each room to particular trait levels, drawing on the Five-Factor Model literature and on prior research into personal space in virtual environments, and they frame the approach as a generic model for categorising players. The paper's own claims are modest: the five rooms were not yet released as a playable demo, the behavioural mappings were derived from bibliographic analysis rather than validated against participant data, and the authors explicitly acknowledge the absence of ground-truth measures. They conclude that reliability and validity remain to be established.

The proposed future work includes a multiplayer version with additional events and communication templates, and a validation study in which participants complete a standard personality questionnaire alongside gameplay so that the in-game metrics can be checked against established measures.