GAMEFULNESS: UNDERSTANDING USER PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIENCE WITH GAME-BASED DUAL-PURPOSE SYSTEMS

Abstract

To move theory forward, important concepts need to be clearly defined (Goertz 2006). Serious games and gamification researchers have recently begun engaging in meaningful work on the mechanisms through which these technologies impact distal outcomes. Gamefulness has been cited as a critical mechanism for generating value through gamified systems (Högberg et al. 2019; Landers et al. 2019). We suggest, however, that progress in this field is stymied by a lack of understanding regarding the critical constituent properties of gamefulness. This dissertation draws on 1) multiple streams of literature such as Information Systems, Philosophy, Human-Computer Interaction and 2) a mixed-methods approach including semi-structured interviews, topic modeling, surveys, and a field experiment to identify ontological attributes that would play a key role in causal hypotheses and explanations about these systems. We also propose and validate a measure of gamefulness. These contributions provide the foundations for theoretically driven serious games and gamification research.