PERSONALIZATION IN SERIOUS GAMES AND

GAMIFIED APPLICATIONSGustavo F. Tondello

February, 2016

Photo: Game Night by Randy Robertson (CC BY 2.0)

What is Personalization?Is it similar to adaptation or customization?

Photo: Choice by Billie Grace Ward (CC BY 2.0)

Photo: Choice by Billie Grace Ward (CC BY 2.0)

Personalization x Adaptation x Customization

• The system automatically adapts its behaviour

• The adaptation responds to the current situation and the current user

• The adaption is specific to each user

• The system must “know” each user by keeping a user profile

Personalization

• The system automatically adapts its behaviour

• The adaptation responds to the current situation

• The adaptation is equal for every user

Adaptation

• The user chooses from a set of options

• The available options are equal for every user

Customization

Is personalization important in serious games?

Photo: Four Days of Bentō by blair_25 (CC BY 2.0)

The importance of personalization in serious games

Photo: Four Days of Bentō by blair_25 (CC BY 2.0)

A study by the University of Saskatchewan with 642 valid participants tested the susceptibility of different player types to different strategies of persuasion towards healthy nutrition in a health game.

BrainHex Player Types

• Seeker

• Survivor

• Daredevil

• Mastermind

• Conqueror

• Socialiser

• Achiever

Health Belief Model persuasion strategies

• Perceived susceptibility

• Perceived severity

• Perceived benefit

• Perceived barrier

• Cue to action

• Self-efficacy

Source: Orji, R., Mandryk, R., Vassileva, J., and Gerling, K. Tailoring Persuasive Health Games to Gamer Type. ACM CHI 2013.

The importance of personalization in serious games

Photo: Four Days of Bentō by blair_25 (CC BY 2.0)Source: Orji, R., Mandryk, R., Vassileva, J., and Gerling, K. Tailoring Persuasive Health Games to Gamer Type. ACM CHI 2013.

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Achiever Conqueror Daredevil Mastermind Seeker Socializer Survivor

The results revealed that different player types respond quite differently to each persuasion strategy. The chart shows how most strategies can be motivating to some player types (positive values), demotivating to others (negative values), and have no significant effect to some of them (missing bars).

The importance of personalization in serious games

Photo: Four Days of Bentō by blair_25 (CC BY 2.0)

Source: Orji, R., Mandryk, R., and Vassileva, J. Gender and Persuasive Technology: Examining the Persuasiveness of Persuasive Strategies by Gender Groups. PERSUASIVE 2014.

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Males Females

Another study with 1,108 valid participants investigated the persuasive effect of different game mechanics for different genders. The results revealed that females were slightly more susceptible to persuasion than males for most game mechanics, except for competition, which was more persuasive for males.

The importance of personalization in gameful apps

Photos: Joyous Running by Joshua Kehn (CC BY 2.0)

Young woman weight training by Richard foster (CC BY-SA 2.0)

It's Never Too Late to Create Healthy Habits by Army Medicine (CC BY 2.0)

Sources: Koivisto, J., and Hamari, J. Demographic differences in perceived benefits from gamification. Computers in Human Behavior, 35 (2014).Kappen, D., Nacke, L., Gerling, K., and Tsotos, L. Design Strategies for Gamified Physical Activity Applications for Older Adults. HICSS 2016.

The University of Tampere evaluated how 195 people used the on-line service Fitocracy. Their results suggested that women might become more engaged in the social activity than men. In addition, they observed that older users perceived the system as less easy to use.

The HCI Games Group studied the gamification of physical activities for older adults and identified four particular challenges for this age group:· fear of age-related difficulties,· preference for feedback from peers or professionals,· strong desire to share activities with friends, · the need for feeling autonomy.

How to design personalized serious games or gameful apps?

Photo: Choice by Billie Grace Ward (CC BY 2.0)

Photo: Games by Ian Dick (CC BY 2.0)

Components for Personalization

Game Space

Missions and Tasks

Characters

Game Mechanics

NarrativeMusic and

Sound

DifficultyPlayer

MatchingPersuasive Strategies

Source: Bakkes, S., Tan, C. T., and Pisan, Y. Personalised Gaming: A Motivation and Overview of Literature. ACM IE 2012.

Photo by geralt (CC0)

Factors for Personalization

Gamer Type

Gamer Ability

Gender

Age Culture Expertise

Photo by geralt (CC0)

Explicit x Implicit Profiling

• Ask questions to the user

Explicit Profiling

• Machine Learning

• Actual responses to persuasive attempts are used to personalize future interactions

Implicit Profiling

Source: Kaptein, M., Markopoulos, P., Ruyter, B., and Aarts, E. Personalizing persuasive technologies: Explicit and implicit personalization using persuasion profiles. Int. Journal on Human-Computer Studies 77. (2015).

What do we still need to investigate?

Photo: Educational games in Balaka by Book Aid International (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Some open questions for research

Which game components should be personalized and how?

What are the factors that need to be considered for personalization?

What are the best ways to establish a user’s personalization profile?

What is the correlation between each factor and each component to be personalized?

Photo: Educational games in Balaka by Book Aid International (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Suggested additional readings

Photo: Educational games in Balaka by Book Aid International (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Workshop on Personalization in Serious and Persuasive Games and

Gamified Interactions

London, UK, 2015

Photo: A Board Game by Karen Borter (CC BY-ND 2.0)