Classical music venues in the Netherlands and throughout the world are struggling to attract new audiences. Especially younger visitors are underrepresented. Previous research emphasizes the importance of providing new, potentially interested audiences with more means to consume the music. This paper presents an exploratory case study with the persuasive game Listening Space which we developed to help attract new audiences and thus preserve Western classical music heritage. In particular, we studied to what extent this game could promote more varied ways of listening to classical music and thus enrich the experience of visiting a classical music concert. We designed and executed a controlled randomized trial with surveys before and after the experiment as well as a series of in-depth interviews with participants after the experiment. Our treatment group consisted of 139 participants (both new and existing visitors). They played our digital game at their own convenience, followed by a visit to a concert in a renowned classical music concert hall. A control group of 165 participants only visited the concerts. We measured the effects of the game - changes in the ways participants listen to classical music - through self-report in questionnaires before and after the experiment. Results show that Listening Space seems most effective for new audiences: the game promoted more varied ways of listening in the treatment group and thus enriched their experience of visiting a classical music concert. The control group of new visitors did not show an effect and also no differences were found between the treatment and control groups of regular visitors of classical music concerts We employed regression analysis to identify predictors of the game's effect on listening styles: participants' age and their level of appreciation of the classical music genre were negatively related to the effectiveness of the game. The way in which participants experienced the game also significantly influenced the effectiveness. This case study shows the potential of using games to promote classical music concerts: games seem to be valuable in attracting new, young audiences and, therefore, represent powerful instruments to help preserve Western classical music cultural heritage. @en

Persuasive games for societal interventions aim to shape, reinforce or change players’ attitudes and behavior to help solving complex societal issues. In earlier work, we explored how persuasive game mechanics may contribute to the formation of attitudes in persuasive games. As a follow-up, this paper presents four design recommendations that could increase the chance that these attitudes will actually lead to the desired behavior shown by players after the game: viz., these attitudes require the right conditions to become a predictor of the desired, post-game behavior. In order to arrive at these recommendations we looked at relevant work from the field of social psychology. Next we linked our insights to the context of persuasive game design. This yielded four conceptual design recommendations for maximizing the likelihood for an attitude influenced by a persuasive game to result in the desired behavior in the real world; 1. aligning the degree of specification of a game’s message and the desired behavior 2. emphasizing the function of the attitude to be influenced 3. enabling players to reflect on their internal states 4. emphasizing personal relevance of an attitude to a behavioral choice So far, these recommendations are still theoretical in nature. We therefore discuss how future work should empirically examine these, including their implications for the effective use of persuasive game mechanics. @en

This paper explores the context dependency of two popular persuasive game design principles in order to improve their effective implementation. Because of limited guidelines the choice and suitability of a persuasive game design principle is often based on a designer’s own intuition. To prevent the use of badly chosen design principles that can be counterproductive, other authors showed the importance of tailoring the persuasive game design principles to various gamer personalities. In this paper we aim to further explore the context dependency of persuasive game design principles and suggest how designers can take this into account when selecting and implementing these principles. Noticing the underexposed role of attitudes concerning persuasion through technology (including persuasive game design principles) we chose the Elaboration Likelihood Model as a framework for our exploration. Findings show different scenarios that describe how both persuasive game design principles can either enhance or reduce the motivation and/or ability of the player to elaborate on the persuasive message of the game. Although theoretical and explorative, this paper may form a starting point for further experimental research on the context dependency of persuasive game design principles in order to improve their effective implementation.@en