Playing to Win or Playing Not to Lose: Measuring Engagement, Enjoyment, and Performance in the Gamification of Tasks with Positive or Negative Framing

A 2025 DiGRA study investigates whether framing a puzzle game's goals positively, as wins to achieve, or negatively, as losses to avoid, changes players' engagement, enjoyment, and performance. The research responds to prior framing studies whose results vary across task types and have rarely been applied to digital games. Using a custom puzzle platform and a gamified space-escape task, the authors measured self-reported enjoyment through ENJOY and GUESS scales, completion time as performance, and physiological arousal through galvanic skin response (GSR), with 93 participants analyzed.

The central finding is that positively framed goals produced significantly higher GSR arousal, measured as peaks per minute and peak amplitude across most levels, which the authors interpret as greater engagement. Self-reported enjoyment and performance did not differ between conditions. The divergence between physiological and self-reported measures is a notable result, suggesting that framing may alter emotional activation without shifting how players rate their experience or how quickly they finish.

The study's scope is limited in several respects. Its sample was predominantly female, the task was short-term and puzzle-based, and outcomes were measured only during play rather than afterward. The authors caution that gamification effects may stem from novelty and could fade or stabilize as players become familiar with a game, making longitudinal research necessary. They also acknowledge risks associated with gamification, including addiction and unhealthy competition, but take no position for or against the practice. Instead, the study positions itself as a contribution to ongoing research on framing effects in digital tasks, calling for future work across gender, task types, and post-game outcomes.