Evaluating the Impact of Gameful Design on Pro-Environmental Attitudes: Beyond Blue as Intervention

Evaluating the Impact of Gameful Design on Pro-Environmental Attitudes: Beyond Blue as Intervention

Evaluating the Impact of Gameful Design on Pro-Environmental Attitudes: Beyond Blue as Intervention

Mahsuum Daiiani, Penny Sweetser, Samantha Stanley, Sabrina Caldwell, Dirk Van Rooy

Abstract

"Videogames have the capacity to change people’s attitudes by engaging players with interactive gameplay, persuasive narratives, and immersive simulated realities. We present a framework that targets attitudinal evaluation in game design by describing how game mechanics, narrative, and animation features form player experiences that influence attitudes. To test this framework, we conducted an interventional study (N=36) using a repeated measures design that tested the effects of a climate-themed simulation game, Beyond Blue, on players’ explicit and implicit pro-environmental attitudes in both the short and long term. We also measured the effects of feature-based design (mechanics, narrative, and animation) and elemental design on attitudes. Our results showed that the climate-themed intervention impacted participants’ short-term cognitive attitudes. We also found that Beyond Blue’s overall mechanics and narrative features were the main significant predictors of pro-environmental cognitive attitudes. Challenge design was the only significant element that predicted participants’ cognitive attitudes. Our results demonstrate that climate communication can benefit from a carefully designed theme-oriented videogame as an effective creative tool."

Reference

Daiiani, M., Sweetser, P., Stanley, S., Caldwell, S., & Van Rooy, D. (2024). Evaluating the impact of gameful design on pro-environmental attitudes: Beyond Blue as intervention. In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG '24). https://doi.org/10.1145/3649921.3649933

Keywords

design evaluation, persuasive framework, pro-environmental attitudes, simulation games, climate