In the UK there is a national shortage of teachers in STEM disciplines, with recruitment challenges compounded by high attrition rates among early-career teachers. To address this, we are developing a persuasive video game to inform STEM undergraduates about teaching careers while helping them assess their fit for the profession. This paper presents the first stage of our design process: co-designing with potential end-users through paper prototypes and focus groups. We conducted focus group interviews and individual semi-structured interviews with STEM undergraduates (n=9, aged 18-23) involving career discussions and interactive play sessions with a paper prototype of our narrative game, TeachQuest. Using thematic analysis, we identified two themes related to teaching career perceptions (Extrinsic barriers shaped by prior experience & Confidence in skills and qualities influence intrinsic motivation) and two themes related to game design preferences (Content and Reflection). Our findings reveal novel insights about the skills and qualities undergraduates believe are required for teaching, and demonstrate how paper prototypes can elicit detailed feedback on persuasive game design. We contribute design guidelines for persuasive career recruitment games that emphasise embedded reflection mechanisms, authentic decision-making, and balanced representation of career realities. These guidelines extend beyond teacher recruitment to inform the design of career exploration games more broadly.

Persuasive games, designed to change attitudes and inspire behavior change, have attracted significant interest. In particular, persuasive recruitment games are increasingly in demand due to under recruitment in many occupations. However, research on persuasive games often lacks clear design guidance and tends to focus on individual player experience factors, rather than identifying and prioritizing the most influential ones that should shape design decisions. Our study (n = 957) examined how player experience impacts recruitment interventions aimed at encouraging careers in teaching. We compared three approaches; a persuasive game, a “realistic job preview” (RJP) and a control game. Effectiveness was measured by increases in Interest (in teaching), Person-vocation (PV) fit and Self-efficacy. Results showed that the persuasive game was the most effective at increasing Interest, while the RJP had the greatest impact on PV fit and Self-efficacy. Interest was primarily influenced by experiences of meaning, followed by mastery. Conversely, mastery followed by meaning were the strongest influences on PV fit and Self-efficacy. Experiences of immersion or autonomy had no significant effect on persuasion. We discuss how understanding which aspects of game experience have most impact can aid the design of persuasive games for recruitment and other purposes. 

Video games have long been heralded as powerful learning tools. Yet half a century since the term “serious games” was coined (Abt, 1970), the evidence on whether and when games can afford learning ...

Flow and self-determination theory predict that game difficulty in balance with player skill maximises enjoyment and engagement, mediated by attentive absorption or competence. Yet recent evidence and methodological concerns are challenging this view, and key theoretical predictions have remained untested, importantly which objective difficulty-skill ratio is perceived as most balanced. To test these, we ran a preregistered study (n=309) using a Go-like 2-player game with an AI opponent, randomly assigning players to one of three objective difficulty-skill ratios (AI plays to win, draw, or lose) over five matches. The AI successfully manipulated objective balance, with the draw condition perceived as most balanced. However, balance did not impact play behaviour, nor did we find the predicted uniform 'inverted-U' between balance and positive play experiences. Importantly, we found both theories too underspecified to severely test. We conclude that balance and competence likely matter less for behavioural engagement than commonly held. We propose alternative factors such as player appraisals, novelty, and progress, and debate the value and challenges of theory-testing work in games HCI.

Digital games are well known for holding players’ attention and stopping them from being distracted by events around them. Being able to quantify how well games hold attention provides a behavioral foundation for measures of game engagement and a link to existing research on attention. We developed a new behavioral measure of how well games hold attention, based on players’ post-game recognition of irrelevant distractors which are shown around the game. This is known as the Distractor Recognition Paradigm (DRP). In two studies we show that the DRP is an effective measure of how well self-paced games hold attention. We show that even simple self-paced games can hold players’ attention completely and the consistency of attentional focus is moderated by game engagement. We compare the DRP to existing measures of both attention and engagement and consider how practical it is as a measure of game engagement. We find no evidence that eye tracking is a superior measure of attention to distractor recognition. We discuss existing research on attention and consider implications for areas such as motivation to play and serious games.

Educational games have long been seen as having great potential, but evidence for their effectiveness is mixed, suggesting deficiencies in our theoretical understanding of learning in games and associated design principles. The principle of "Intrinsic integration" of learning content with game mechanics (Habgood and Ainsworth, 2011) increases learning in educational games, but the theoretical mechanisms behind the principle are unclear, leading to implementation issues. In response, we performed a pre-registered study (n=210) to test possible motivational, cognitive load or attentional mechanisms for moderating learning at an abstract learning task within an educational game similar to Pacman. Learning was higher in the intrinsically integrated version with no significant effects of motivation or cognitive load leading to the conclusion that intrinsic integration increased learning via an attentional mechanism where players only pay attention to features needed for the game task and ignore task-irrelevant information. We discuss theoretical implications for game learning as well as insights for designers of educational games.

Reflection is an important precursor to attitude and behavior change, but existing advice on designing for reflection in games is mixed and requires further empirical investigation. We report on the design and evaluation (n=32) of a game to prompt student reflection on work-life balance. Participants played as themselves or a third person character (Alex). An inductive qualitative analysis of post-play interviews, and a follow-up one week later, resulted in four themes relating to how gameplay facilitated reflection: making (sensible) consequences visible; it's like MY life; the space between Alex and I; and triggers in everyday life. A deductive qualitative analysis also indicated that while both games resulted in different forms of reflection for the majority of players, those who role-played as Alex appeared more likely to experience higher levels of reflection. Through exploring the ways in which the two versions of the game succeeded, and failed, to support reflection, we highlight the importance of providing a relevant context to players (so the game feels close to their experience), and allowing them to role-play as someone other than themselves (but not too close).