Article | Open Access
| Ahead of Print | Last Modified: 30 September 2024
Amplifying Player Experience to Facilitate Prosocial Outcomes in a Narrative-Based Serious Game
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Abstract: The rise and development of serious games have shown promise in addressing critical social issues, including school bullying. However, prior work often compares game-based interventions with the conventional non-game approach, failing to generate insights about which game features should be emphasized to create more effective games. To bridge this research gap, in light of video games’ advantages for creating immersive experiences that benefit persuasion, we created a narrative-based serious game addressing school bullying and conducted two studies (Study 1, N = 130; Study 2, N = 250) to explore the persuasive effects of two game features, respectively player–avatar similarity and in-game control, on player experience (including player–avatar identification, narrative engagement, and empathy) and prosocial intention. We found mixed results subject to player perspective such that only when players took the bully’s perspective did one of the game features—in-game control—successfully create the intended empathy via amplified narrative engagement toward the desirable prosocial intention.
Keywords: empathy; in-game control; narrative engagement; player–avatar identification; player–avatar similarity; prosocial intention; serious game
Published:
Ahead of Print
Issue:
Vol 13 (2025): Digital Games at the Forefront of Change: On the Meaningfulness of Games and Game Studies (In Progress)
© Lewen Wei, Mike Schmierbach, Bingjie Liu, Jin Kang, Cheng Chen, Frank E. Dardis, Ryan Tan, Olivia Cohen. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction of the work without further permission provided the original author(s) and source are credited.