The author shows that contradicting the findings of Lieberoth (2015) simply framing an activity as a game does not increase intrinsic motivation of the participants in a difficult puzzle task. Moreover, for participants who failed at the puzzle, it does not make any difference in terms of intrinsic motivation whether it was framed as a task, a meaningful task, a game or a test of cognitive abilities. However, perceived value of the activity and satisfaction of the need for autonomy were identified as significant predictors for completing additional rounds of the task. This lends support for the importance of the voluntariness and meaningfulness of the task to keep people engaged in gamification.

Psychological Study Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Autorentext
Florian Brühlmann is PhD student at the HCI research group at the University of Basel, Switzerland. He is a trained psychologist with special emphasis on Human-Computer Interaction. His research interests include player experience research, questionnaire development and statistical methods for human-computer interaction research.

Inhalt
The Perspective of Self-Determination Theory.- The Role of Context in the Perception of Feedback.- Failing and Uncertainty in Games.- Two Experiments Testing the Effects of Framing on Motivation.- Implications for Theory and Design of Gamification.