Motivational Aspects of Gameplay: The Roles of Indirect Engagement and Social Presence in Play

Abstract: Our thesis revolves around how intrinsically motivational incentives can be created by using gameplay elements and features instead of creating motivation with extrinsically mediated rewards. We find problems with achievement systems being too focused on rewarding players extrinsically instead of adding to the increase in motivation along with the gameplay experience. Using theories from the psychology field on motivation we created a foundation from which we started to design a game that creates motivation through its features and mechanics. From the feedback we received on our user testing and interviews, all within an iterative design process, we found that users responded more positively to our suggested improvements concerning the high score list feature in particular, followed by general gameplay features like visual feedback.From the summarized data we have collected we have noticed that one of the main features people wanted in games was feedback on what and how they were doing, whether it was an action or where their competition was.