Exploring video games that invoke curiosity

Abstract

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.