Video games frequently feature 'open world' environments, designed to motivate exploration. Level design patterns are implemented to invoke curiosity and to guide player behavior. However, evidence of the efficacy of such patterns has remained theoretical. This study presents an empirical study of how level design patterns impact curiosity-driven exploration in a 3D open-world video game. 254 participants played a game in an empirical study using a between-subjects factorial design, testing 4 variables: presence or absence of patterns, goal or open-ended, nature and alien aesthetic, and assured or unassured compensation. Data collection consisted of in-game metrics and emotion word prompts as well as post-game questionnaires. Results show that design patterns invoke heightened exploration, but this effect is influenced by the presence of an explicit goal or monetary compensation. There appear to be many motivations behind exploratory behavior in games, with patterns raising expectations in players. A disposition for curiosity (i.e. 'trait curiosity') was not found to influence exploration. We interpret and discuss the impact of the conditions, individual patterns, and player motivations. @en

Validation of serious games tends to focus on evaluating their design as a whole. While this helps to assess whether a particular combination of game mechanics is successful, it provides little insight into how individual mechanics contribute or detract from a serious game's purpose or a player's game experience. This study analyses the effect of game mechanics commonly used in casual games for engagement, measured as a combination of player behaviour and reported game experience. Secondly, it examines the role of a serious game's purpose on those same measures. An experimental study was conducted with 204 participants playing several versions of a serious game to explore these points. The results show that adding additional game mechanics to a core gameplay loop did not lead to participants playing more or longer, nor did it improve their game experience. Players who were aware of the game's purpose, however, perceived the game as more beneficial, scored their game experience higher, and progressed further. The results show that game mechanics on their own do not necessarily improve engagement, while the effect of perceived value deserves further study. @en

Curiosity is a strong motivator for human action, but the circumstances under which one becomes curious are not clear. This paper builds on the assumption that video games can be used as a stimulus for the experimental study of curiosity, and forms a basis in examining the type of curiosity motivated by spatial exploration. A video game was created that incorporates five proposed ‘game design patterns’ that may induce curiosity in players. The game, Shinobi Valley, was tested in a pilot study with 24 participants. Participants responded positively to the game and exhibited exploratory behaviour while playing without specifically being prompted to do so. The presented results suggest which of the patterns are most promising in inducing curiosity, and show that the game is of sufficient quality to be used in larger studies.@en

With increasing technological capabilities, video games provide ever more expan-sive virtual worlds for players to explore. Designers employ various mechanics and level design principles to encourage such exploration. However, what moti-vates people to explore in virtual environments, and which approaches are success-ful, is not yet clearly established. Methods for measuring player experience often take place retroactively after a play session, relying on recall, and are thus prone to missing less salient events and their motivations. Journaling events as they occur allow promises to be a suitable method of collecting data, but presents a challenge in aggregating data points due to their freeform nature. This makes it difficult to identify overarching patterns of exploration behaviour. We present an exploratory study in devising a journaling protocol for gathering information during game-play sessions, focused on documenting moments of exploration in a manner that balances ease of data capture and data evaluation. We describe our efforts in proto-typing this journaling method and how we used it to analyse Cyberpunk 2077 and several other game designs. Our results show that exploration occurs in a pattern of event → expectation → resolution. The motivation to explore depends on the expectations that a game raises through its marketing and design. At the same time, exploratory behaviour going unrewarded by the game quickly reduces the desire to explore. When recording instances of exploration, the addition of emotion words is essential in order to properly contextualize the information. This arti-cle lays the foundation for documenting exploration in games, as well as other emotional or behavioural constructs that require in-the-moment data collection.@en

Research has found that successful game-based learning (GBL) is dependent on several factors, e.g. students, parents, teachers and educational setting. Nevertheless, many existing GBL solutions primarily consider the student. Similarly, they focus on imparting and assessing content-specific knowledge rather than encouraging students to become intrinsically motivated learners. This paper presents CURIO, an educational game kit that involves teachers as game masters'. It encourages inquisitive mindsets in students and helps to structure discussions when introducing a new topic in class. It informs the teacher of students' pre-existing knowledge so that they can better shape upcoming classes to their needs. A pilot study with a class of 25 primary school students and their homeroom teacher evaluated a prototype of CURIO. The paper concludes with guidelines learned from creating and testing CURIO that can help with the development of tools for teachers using the same design philosophy.@en

With hybrid board games rising in popularity and game AI algorithms becoming more sophisticated, there is potential in involving AI to create novel game experiences and tools that can support developers. However, examples of hybrid board games that involve AI remain relatively sparse. In this work, we propose that creating a taxonomy of AI in hybrid board games can help the development of games that occupy as-of-yet unexplored areas of the design space. By mapping out different dimensions through which the involvement of AI in such games can be understood, we seek to encourage further academic discussions and applied explorations.@en

Curiosity is considered an important aspect of human life, but understanding the circumstances that cause a person to become curious poses a challenge for research. This paper proposes video games as a stimulus for the experimental study of curiosity. For this purpose, we conducted a survey with the goal of assessing what video game titles and genres could be considered reliable instruments for invoking curiosity. To involve different types of curiosity, we included the Five-Dimensional Curiosity Scale (5DC) questionnaire. The survey was completed by 113 participants, and resulted in 301 game suggestions that warrant further analysis. Exploration and Social Simulation games in particular were found to rank high in triggering curiosity. To explain this result, we present a first analysis of potential game patterns that help trigger curiosity within these genres.@en