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Voluntary Play in Serious Games

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Games and Learning Alliance (GALA 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 9599))

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Abstract

Voluntariness is an important feature of games. Serious game designers intend to generate engaging gameplay, which implies that voluntary play should be equally important for serious games as for entertainment games. This paper describes the outcome of a study on the impact of voluntariness on learning in a serious game. The results of 19 participants, randomly assigned to voluntary and mandatory gameplay, are analyzed to identify possible differences. The findings of this study suggest that, contrary to the opinion of many game designers, being required to play a serious game does not necessarily take the fun out of the game.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR), Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Esther Kuindersma & Jelke van der Pal

  2. Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Jaap van den Herik & Aske Plaat

Authors
  1. Esther Kuindersma
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  2. Jelke van der Pal
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  3. Jaap van den Herik
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  4. Aske Plaat
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Esther Kuindersma .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Università di Genova, Genoa, Italy

    Alessandro De Gloria

  2. Information and Computer Science, University of Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Remco Veltkamp

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Kuindersma, E., van der Pal, J., van den Herik, J., Plaat, A. (2016). Voluntary Play in Serious Games. In: De Gloria, A., Veltkamp, R. (eds) Games and Learning Alliance. GALA 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9599. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40216-1_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40216-1_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-40215-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-40216-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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