Design Inspiration for Motivating Uncertainty in Games using Stage Magic Principles

Uncertainty is widely acknowledged as an engaging player experience. Practice and research have proposed various types of game uncertainty, yet there is little work explaining when and why they motivate, especially with respect to ‘micro-level’, moment-to-moment gameplay. Moreover, there is little insight into designing for motivating uncertainty in games. In response, this research aims to answer (1) what constitutes motivating moment-to-moment uncertainty and (2) how to elicit it through game design, taking inspiration from stage magic. We survey player motivation, player experience and related literature in psychology, exposing underrepresentation of epistemic emotions in games. We showcase the motivating role of uncertainty in moment-to-moment gameplay, proving its link to curiosity and other epistemic emotions. We present this with a grounded theory taxonomy of seven types of engaging gameplay uncertainty emerging from three sources - game, player, and outcome. For inspiration, we survey the field of stage magic to find design principles used to elicit epistemic emotions. We identify equivoque, an important forcing technique, to create the illusion of choice and thus engaging decision uncertainty in games. We empirically test the efficacy of equivoque through three studies: (1) using playing cards; (2) in a narrative game to create decision uncertainty; (3) repeating the trick four times consecutively in an extended version of the game. Overall, our work exposes gaps in player motivation research, especially regarding empirical work on epistemic emotions in games. It provides a taxonomy of motivating uncertainty types. It establishes magic as a promising source of game design inspiration, and zeroes down on equivoque for evoking uncertainty. Furthermore, it provides empirical evidence that equivoque can be used in narrative games to elicit decision uncertainty. Finally, it provides insights into translational work between creative fields and from theory to design

The Magician’s Choice: Providing illusory choice and sense of agency with the Equivoque forcing technique

Forcing techniques allow magicians to subtly influence spectators’ choices and the outcome of their actions, and they provide powerful tools to study decision-making and the illusory sense of agency and freedom over choices we make. We investigate the Equivoque force, a technique that exploits semantic ambiguities and people’s failure to notice inconsistencies, to ensure that a spectator ends up with a pre-determined outcome. Similarly to choice blindness paradigms, the Equivoque forces participants to end up with an item they did not choose in the first place. However, here, the subterfuge is accomplished in full view. In three experiments, we showed that the Equivoque is highly effective in providing participants an illusory sense of agency over the outcome of their actions, even after two repetitions of the trick (experiment 2), and using items for which pre-existing preferences can be present (experiment 3). Across all experiments, participants were oblivious to inconsistencies in the procedure used to guide their decisions, and they were genuinely surprised by the experimenter’s matching prediction. Contrary to our prediction, the Equivoque force did not significantly change participants’ preference for the chosen item. We discuss the results with regards to other illusions of agency (e.g. forcing, choice blindness), failures in noticing semantic inconsistencies (e.g Moses illusion), and issues surrounding choice-induced-preference literature

The Role of Uncertainty in Moment-to-Moment Player Motivation : A Grounded Theory

Uncertainty is widely acknowledged as an engaging characteristic of games. Practice and research have proposed various types and factors of game uncertainty, yet there is little work explaining when and why different kinds of uncertainty motivate, especially with respect to ’micro-level’, moment- to-moment gameplay. We therefore conducted a qualitative interview study of players tracing links between uncertainty experiences, specific game features, and player motives. Data supports that uncertainty is indeed a key element in keeping players motivated moment-to-moment. We present a grounded theory of seven types of engaging gameplay uncertainty emerging from three sources - game, player, and outcome - and document links to likely underlying motives, chief among them curiosity and competence. Comparing our empirically grounded taxonomy with existing ones shows partial fits as well as identifies novel uncertainty types insufficiently captured in previous models

Studying General Agents in Video Games from the Perspective of Player Experience

Research actively explores and advances the play strength of general agents, which are able to play video games without having specific knowledge about them. However, how general agents impact player experience and motivation when implemented in commercially viable games is largely unexplored. In this paper, we investigate this relationship as initial work towards linking general agent behaviour and player experience as a step towards making general agents applicable to commercial video games. Specifically, we created two versions of a simple competitive human-versus-agent game having two general Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) agents with different behaviours. These agents, without having specific knowledge about the game, have two unique goals: i) maximising score; and ii) exploring (more suitable for the game we chose). We integrated these agents into a ’capture the flag’ game and conducted a study to investigate the effects on several player motivation components of the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI) and Player Experience of Need Satisfaction (PENS) scale. Enquiry in this direction opens up the possibilities to start analysing general agents from the perspective of the player’s journey