Increasing Player Participation in Pervasive Educational Games

In recent years, games have gained much attention in education and it is widely recognized that Game Based Learning can help engage students to learn. Educational gameplay with various levels of “forced participation” works well in the classroom where games are played for a limited time period under the supervision of a teacher. Participation in educational games played outside of the classroom, on the other hand, is less predictable or reliable. This is particularly a problem for pervasive games, where most of the gameplay takes place outside of the classroom in the player’s leisure time. Pervasive games have shown potential within GBL, but experience has shown that active participation is a major challenge. Even if the players have a positive attitude towards the game and experience the game as a fun and exciting to play, it is still difficult to motivate students to participate sufficiently to reach the defined learning outcomes. For Game Based Learning to take the step out of the classroom and into the players’ everyday life, making learning pervasive, it is important to understand the gaming elements and features that motivate the players to engage in the game play and consequently the learning process. This paper presents the results of the experimental pervasive game HiNTHunt2013 which extends a previous version of the same game with specific features intended to increase player participation. The extended features can easily be adapted and integrated into other types of games used in Game Based Learning. The aim of the experiments documented in this paper is to explore and evaluate different types of motivational features in game play and the effect these features have on player participation. The results presented in this paper show that the extensions introduced in order to increase player participation had a positive impact. These findings will contribute to the understanding of how to motivate player participation in pervasive games.