International Journal of Serious Games

An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Gamification: Mechanics, Psychological Mediators and Outcomes

Gamification serves as a strategic intervention for influencing user behavior across diverse sectors, including education, healthcare, sustainability, and retail.

• Gamification effectiveness is not universal; success depends on aligning specific game mechanics with the unique goals and environmental constraints of the target domain.
• Designers should move away from generic implementations of points, badges, and leaderboards in favor of a reverse-engineering approach that prioritizes specific institutional objectives.
• The impact of game mechanics on user behavior is mediated by psychological states, specifically flow, autonomy, social interaction, and affect.

May the Plan be with you!: A Usability Study of the Stimulated Planning Game Element Embedded in a MOOC Platform

The integration of Stimulated Planning (SP) game elements into Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platforms serves as a strategic intervention to mitigate high dropout rates by fostering goal achievement through implementation intention theory.

• Integrating Stimulated Planning (SP) game elements into Open edX platforms aims to reduce high MOOC dropout rates by applying implementation intention theory to learner goal-setting.
• A mixed-methods usability study of 17 participants yielded a System Usability Scale (SUS) score of 75.94, indicating high user satisfaction and functional effectiveness.
• Eye-tracking metrics and think-aloud interviews identified that secondary planning pages impose a higher cognitive load on users compared to the core system.

Lessons Learned from Implementing Project Management Games

Project management serious games serve as a critical bridge between theoretical academic instruction and the multifaceted realities of professional practice.

A Fuzzy Logic Module to Estimate a Driver’s Fuel Consumption for Reality-Enhanced Serious Games

The integration of fuzzy logic modules into reality-enhanced serious games provides a robust framework for estimating real-time vehicle fuel consumption.

The Players' Experience of Immersion in Persuasive Games: A Study of My Life as a Refugee and PeaceMaker

Immersion serves as a fundamental mechanism for enhancing the efficacy of persuasive games, acting as a bridge between interactive play and the reception of socio-political messaging.

• Immersion in persuasive games functions as the primary bridge between interactive play and the effective communication of socio-political messaging.
• The player's ability to identify with characters and internalize complex narratives is the fundamental driver of engagement in titles like My Life as a Refugee and PeaceMaker.
• Effective persuasive impact requires a strategic balance between emotional resonance and analytical engagement, utilizing ludic elements like time constraints to force critical thinking.

A Game-Based Tool for Cross-Cultural Discussion: Encouraging Cultural Awareness with Board Games

Board games serve as a highly effective pedagogical tool for fostering cross-cultural awareness and facilitating sensitive discussions within educational environments.

A Tutorial on Machine Learning for Interactive Pedagogical Systems

Machine learning serves as a critical foundation for the development of adaptive, personalized pedagogical systems, including intelligent tutoring platforms and serious games.

• Machine learning replaces static, hand-crafted rules with data-driven models to enable adaptive, personalized instruction in intelligent tutoring platforms and serious games.
• Empirical evidence from environments like Crystal Island demonstrates that tailoring educational experiences to individual user needs significantly improves learning outcomes.
• Supervised learning techniques, including decision trees, k-nearest neighbors, and neural networks, are used to model continuous motion and facilitate effective human-robot interaction.

Get Gamification of MOOC Right: How to Embed the Individual and Social Aspects of MOOCs in Gamification Design

Massive Open Online Courses frequently suffer from low completion rates and diminished user engagement, largely because they are often structured as traditional academic environments rather than flexible, goal-oriented platforms.

• Gamification in MOOCs must move beyond superficial mechanics like points and badges to integrate psychological theories of social presence, flow, and implementation intention.
• Effective design requires treating individual learning objectives and collective social interaction as a unified system rather than isolated features.
• A structured, six-phase design methodology has been developed to address low completion rates and engagement by shifting MOOCs from traditional academic structures to goal-oriented platforms.

How to Train Your Syllable Stress Awareness: A Digital Game-Based Intervention for German Dyslexic Children

German dyslexic children face significant challenges navigating the complex orthographic rules of the German language, yet there remains a notable scarcity of empirically validated digital interventions to support their literacy development.

• Prosodiya is a mobile serious game developed to supplement traditional therapy for German dyslexic children by targeting syllable stress awareness, vowel length, and orthographic markers.
• The intervention utilizes embodied cognition by integrating wearable sensors that connect physical mouth motor activities with linguistic structures.
• The platform employs game-design elements including fantasy-themed narratives, adaptive difficulty mechanics, and incentive-based reward systems to maintain learner engagement and autonomy.

OneUp: Supporting Practical and Experimental Gamification of Learning

Higher education faces a persistent challenge in implementing effective gamification due to a lack of empirical evidence and the absence of flexible, customizable software tools.

• OneUp is a configurable, event-based platform designed to support empirical research and pedagogical innovation in higher education gamification.
• The platform architecture is grounded in Self-Determination Theory, focusing on the psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness rather than superficial mechanics like points and badges.
• Instructors use a course-independent framework to structure learning through virtual currency, leaderboards, and dynamic problem sets while utilizing visual analytics to track student progress.

Development of a Hardware/Software System for Proprioception Exergaming

The development of a low-cost, open-source exergaming system seeks to bridge the gap between clinical proprioception therapy and engaging serious games.

• A study of 40 participants confirmed a strong 0.738 correlation between in-game performance on the balance board and real-world equilibrium skills.
• The system utilizes low-cost, open-source hardware, specifically Arduino and inertial sensors, to create a scalable platform for proprioception therapy.
• Keyboard-based controls showed zero correlation with physical balance, proving that specialized motion-sensing hardware is essential for effective proprioceptive feedback.

Employee Profiles and Preferences towards IoT-enabled Gamification for Energy Conservation

IoT-enabled gamification serves as a strategic tool for fostering long-term energy conservation within multicultural corporate environments.

• Achievers and Philanthropists are the most prevalent user profiles in corporate environments, making them the primary targets for energy-saving gamification strategies.
• Progression, levels, and points are the most effective gamification mechanics for driving employee participation in energy conservation initiatives.
• A study of 99 participants across three European countries confirms that mapping gamification mechanics to specific HEXAD user profiles significantly improves engagement and behavioral change.