Lennart Nacke

University of Waterloo | UWaterloo · Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business

Over the last decade, the free-to-play (F2P) game business model has gained popularity in the games industry. We examine the role of deceptive design during a game’s transition to F2P and its impacts on players. Our analysis focuses on game mechanics and a Reddit analysis of the Overwatch (OW) series after it transitioned to an F2P model. Our study...

Deceptive game designs that intentionally manipulate players are increasingly common in the gaming industry, but the impact on players is not well studied. While studies have revealed player frustration , there is a gap in understanding how cultural attributes affect the impact of deceptive design in games. This paper proposes a new research direct...

As Virtual Reality (VR) games become more popular, it is crucial to understand how deceptive game design patterns manifest and impact player experiences in this emerging medium. Our study sheds light on the presence and effects of manipulative design techniques in commercial VR games compared to a traditional computer game. We conducted an autoethn...

Exergaming, blending exercise and gaming, improves the physical and mental health of older adults. We currently do not fully know the factors that drive older adults to either engage in or abstain from exergaming. Large-scale studies investigating this are still scarce, particularly those studying East Asian older adults. To address this, we interv...

Generative AI (GenAI) use in research writing is growing fast. However, it is unclear how peer reviewers recognize or misjudge AI-augmented manuscripts. To investigate the impact of AI-augmented writing on peer reviews, we conducted a snippet-based online survey with 17 peer reviewers from top-tier HCI conferences. Our findings indicate that while...

Gamification has become one of the main areas in information systems and human–computer interaction research related to users’ motivations and behaviors. Within this context, a significant research gap is the lack of understanding of how users’ characteristics, especially in terms of their preferences for gameful interaction (i.e., user typologies)...

Previous research demonstrates that the interruption of immersive experiences may lead to a bias in the results of questionnaires. Thus, the traditional way of presenting questionnaires, paper-based or web-based, may not be compatible with evaluating VR experiences. Recent research has shown the positive impact of embedding questionnaires contextua...

The well-established deceptive design literature has focused on conventional user interfaces. With the rise of extended reality (XR), understanding deceptive design's unique manifestations in this immersive domain is crucial. However, existing research lacks a full, cross-disciplinary analysis that analyzes how XR technologies enable new forms of d...

Extended Reality (XR) technology is changing online interactions, but its granular data collection sensors may be more invasive to user privacy than web, mobile, and the Internet of Things technologies. Despite an increased interest in studying developers' concerns about XR device privacy, user perceptions have rarely been addressed. We surveyed 46...

Extended Reality (XR) technology is changing online interactions, but its granular data collection sensors may be more invasive to user privacy than web, mobile, and the Internet of Things technologies. Despite an increased interest in studying developers' concerns about XR device privacy, user perceptions have rarely been addressed. We surveyed 46...

Many people struggle to exercise regularly, raising the risk of serious health-related issues. Extended reality (XR) exergames address these hurdles by combining physical exercises with enjoyable, im- mersive gameplay. While a growing body of research explores XR exergames, no previous review has structured this rapidly expanding research landscape...

This workshop paper presents a critical examination of the integration of Generative AI (Gen AI) into the academic writing process, focusing on the use of AI as a collaborative tool. It contrasts the performance and interaction of two AI models, Gemini and ChatGPT, through a collaborative inquiry approach where researchers engage in facilitated ses...

The rapid advancement of Generative AI (Gen-AI) is transforming Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), with significant implications across various sectors. This study investigates the public's perception of Sora OpenAI, a pioneering Gen-AI video generation tool, via social media discussions on Reddit before its release. It centers on two main questions...

Introduction In recent years, cryptocurrency has increasingly sparked interest among investors. Many people have invested in this field without adequate knowledge. Existing research has shown that using game design elements can be an effective method of education. Such learning interventions can potentially be a good match for educating market inve...

Gamification studies in the educational domain usually focus on motivating students to increase their learning performance by enhancing their motivation. Classifications of behavioural profiles are often used for this (referred to as "gamer" or "user types"), which support the personalization of students' experiences. These classifications consider...

To foster the development of pedagogically potent and ethically sound AI-integrated learning landscapes, it is pivotal to critically explore the perceptions and experiences of the users immersed in these contexts. In this study, we perform a thorough qualitative content analysis across four key social media platforms. Our goal is to understand the...

Esta pesquisa introduz um novo framework de gamificação baseado em narrativa, abordando desafios emergentes na retenção e engajamento do aluno no cenário da educação digital. Desenvolvemos uma ontologia de aplicação e uma abordagem de personalização, classificando tipos de usuários, para promover experiências de aprendizagem imersivas e adaptáveis....

We lack a shared and detailed understanding in gamification of what game elements are. To address this, we provide a scoping review of the last five years of gamification research, focusing primarily on how game elements have been applied and characterized. We retrieved the definitions of game elements from 280 research papers, conducted a content...

With the increasing popularity of cryptocurrency, many people are interested in cryptocurrency investments, but have so far hesitated. Many others have made investments without adequate preparation. To help interested investors improve their understanding of cryptocurrency and make rational investment decisions, it is important to study their conce...

In gamification, personalization is considered an important field of research since it can improve user engagement and motivation. Particularly, effective gamified learning needs to strike a balance between gameful design that promotes engagement and does not negatively affect content comprehension and absorption. The existing traditional user-type...

To foster the development of pedagogically potent and ethically sound AI-integrated learning landscapes, it is pivotal to critically explore the perceptions and experiences of the users immersed in these contexts. In this study, we perform a thorough qualitative content analysis across four key social media platforms. Our goal is to understand the...

The Hexad scale is a crucial tool for personalized gamification in user experience (UX) design. However, completing a 24-item questionnaire can increase dropout rates and screen fatigue within online surveys. When included in larger surveys, scale brevity makes a difference. To reduce the time required for the assessment process, we developed and v...

Virtual Reality (VR) exergames can increase engagement in and motivation for physical activities. Most VR exergames focus on the upper body because many VR setups only track the users' heads and hands. To become a serious alternative to existing exercise programs, VR exergames must provide a balanced workout and train the lower limbs, too. To addre...

Game economies (GEs) describe how resources in games are created, transformed, or exchanged: they underpin most games and exist in different complexities. Their complexity may directly impact player difficulty. Nevertheless, neither difficulty nor complexity adjustment has been explored for GEs. Moreover, there is a lack in knowledge about complexi...

Virtual Reality (VR) exergames can increase engagement in and motivation for physical activities. Most VR exergames focus on the upper body because many VR setups only track the users' heads and hands. To become a serious alternative to existing exercise programs, VR exergames must provide a balanced workout and train the lower limbs, too. To addre...

Questionnaires are vital in games user research (GUR) to assess player experience (PX). However, having too many questions in surveys prevents wider uptake among GUR professionals because of games' rapid production cycles. To address this issue, we present the miniPXI---an eleven-item measure of the popular Player Experience Inventory (PXI)---provi...

Visual indicators provide important in-game information, but displaying them on screen consumes space and increases clutter. In addition, the option to increase indicator brightness above levels possible in standard monitors can substantially improve accessibility. To address both aspects, we developed an ambient lighting system for video game indi...

Team cohesion is a widely known predictor of performance and collaborative satisfaction. However, how it develops and can be assessed, especially in fast-paced ad hoc dynamic teams, remains unclear. An unobtrusive and objective behavioural measure of cohesion would help identify determinants of cohesion in these teams. We investigated team communic...

The growing adoption of learning analytics (LA) approaches and data mining (DM) techniques using educational gamification data sets is reflected in increased publications on this topic. However, with different gamified contexts and a variety of LA methods available, no comprehensive review summarized the obtained findings. Therefore, this research...

Researchers reference realism in digital games without sufficient specificity. Without clarity about the dimensions of realism, we cannot assess how and when to aim for a higher degree of realism, when lower realism suffices, or when purposeful unrealism is ideal for a game and can benefit player experience (PX). To address this conceptual gap, we...

Sound effects (SFX) complement the visual feedback provided by gamification elements in gamified systems. However, the impact of SFX has not been systematically studied. To bridge this gap, we investigate the effects of SFX-supplementing points (as a gamification element)-on task performance and user experience in a gamified image classification ta...

Social connections shape our behaviour because of peer pressure and social contagion. This phenomenon is amplified in online networks by particularly influential individuals: influencers. Although this concept originated in social media, recent research shows how influencers can also exist in games and affect players' long-term retention. Prolonged...

Information system (IS) gamification has been successful in many contexts. Yet, research has shown gamification’s success to vary between individuals. In this paper, we compare personalized versus non-personalized gamification in a warehouse management setting. We devised a 26-participant within-subject experiment in which we programmed goal settin...

In multiplayer collaborative games, players need to coordinate their actions and synchronize their efforts effectively to succeed as a team, thus individual differences have the potential to impact teamwork and gameplay. This paper investigates the effects of cognitive styles on teams engaged in collaborative gaming activities. Fifty-four individua...

Increasingly, virtual reality (VR) design and research leverages gameplay asymmetries, flattening discrepancies of interface, abilities, information or other aspects between players. A common goal is to induce social interactions that draw players without head-mounted displays into a shared game world. Exploring these asymmetries resulted in many a...

In video games, identification with avatars—virtual entities or characters driven by human behavior—has been shown to serve many interpersonal and intraindividual functions (like social connection, self-expression, or identity exploration) but our understanding of the psychological variables that influence players' avatar choices remains incomplete...

With gamification flourishing in popularity in educational research, it is essential to synthesize the expanding literature on educational gamification. The current umbrella review aims to comprehensively canvas the disparate findings and conflicting conclusions by critically examining educational gamification reviews. We included 46 reviews of sta...

The gamification of information systems has seen success in a variety of contexts. However, research has shown that the degree to which gamification is successful varies between individuals. The current paper evaluates the effectiveness of personalized gamification in a warehouse management context. Additionally, this paper explores why personalize...

Personalization is essential for gameful systems. Past research showed that the Hexad user types model is particularly suitable for personalizing user experiences. The validated Hexad user types questionnaire is an effective tool for scientific purposes. However, it is less suitable in practice for personalizing gameful applications, because fillin...

Game atmosphere and game audio are critical factors linked to the commercial success of video games. However, game atmosphere has been neither operationalized nor clearly defined in games user research literature, making it difficult to study. We define game atmosphere as the emerging subjective experience of a player caused by the strong audiovisu...

How much music contributes to player experience (PX) in virtual reality (VR) games remains unclear in the games user research literature. A core factor of PX in VR games that has not been studied before (in relation to audio or otherwise) is time perception. Thus, we provide the first empirical exploration of how music affects time perception in a...

Gamification has enabled technology to facilitate behavior change through increasing the engagement and motivation of people in health and wellness domains. While research on physical activity (PA) and why older adults engage in PA exists, there are not many long-term studies on how gamification influences technology use and adherence to PA by olde...

BACKGROUND While in many contexts unsuccessful games targeting learning, social interaction, or behavioural change have few downsides, when covering a sensitive domain such as mental health, care must be taken to avoid harm and stigmatization of people who live with mental health conditions. As a result, evaluation of the game to identify benefits...

Background Although in many contexts unsuccessful games targeting learning, social interaction, or behavioral change have few downsides, when covering a sensitive domain such as mental health (MH), care must be taken to avoid harm and stigmatization of people who live with MH conditions. As a result, evaluation of the game to identify benefits and...

Personalized gamification is the tailoring of gameful design elements to user preferences to improve engagement. However, studies of user preferences have so far relied on self-reported data only and few studies investigated the effects of personalized gameful systems on task performance. This study shows that personalized gamification works in pra...

The purpose of video game tutorials is to help players easily understand new game mechanics and thereby facilitate chances of early engagement with the main contents of one’s game. The mobile game market (i.e., phones and tablets) faces important retention issues caused by a high number of players who abandon games permanently within 24 h of downlo...

While gamification strategy has been used in many areas such as marketing, education, health and wellness, only a few projects have investigated the relevance of longer study durations. There are limited number of long-term studies in the usage of gamification elements to facilitate motivation and engagement of users in a physical activity (PA) set...

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers more and more challenge the notion of technologies as objects and humans as subjects. This conceptualization has led to various approaches inquiring into object perspectives within HCI. Even though the development and analysis of games and players is filled with notions of intersubjectivity, games resear...

Purpose In a warehouse setting, where hourly workers performing manual tasks account for more than half of total warehouse expenditure, a lack of employee engagement has been directly linked to company performance. In this article, the authors present a laboratory experiment in which two gamification elements, goal setting and feedback, are impleme...

The Games User Research literature has advanced considerably on understanding why people play games and what different types of games or mechanics they prefer. However, what has been less studied is how models of player preferences explain their game choices. In this study, we address this question by combining and analyzing two datasets (N = 188 a...

Gameful digital applications have been adopted in higher education to help increase student engagement and improve learning. However, many studies have only evaluated educational applications that combine some common game design elements—such as points, leaderboards, or levels. Consequently, we still lack studies exploring different ways of designi...

We investigate and characterize a design space for in-car games based on a survey of previous work, and identify an opportunity for "cross-car" multiplayer games played among occupants in nearby cars. This is supported by innovations in automotive technology like autonomous driving, full-window heads-up displays, and ad hoc communication between ve...

With idle games, active withdrawal from the game comprises an essential part of gameplay as players wait for the game state to change over time. This mode of interaction is paradigmatic for the change of roles technologies have in our lives. However, the design elements of idle games are less well understood, particularly from the perspectives of d...

Children with Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder or AD(H)D can require treatment for which they need to experience long-lasting neurofeedback sessions. Children might not adhere to at-home treatment activities because of the nature of these sessions; thus, not getting the benefits of the program. To increase adherence and effectiveness of t...

Games User Research (GUR) focuses on measuring, analysing and understanding player experiences to optimise game designs. Hence, GUR experts aim to understand how specific game design choices are experienced by players, and how these lead to specific emotional responses. An instrument, providing such actionable insight into player experience, specif...

Player typology models classify different player motivations and behaviours. These models are necessary to design personalized games or to target specific audiences. However, many models lack validation and standard measurement instruments. Additionally, they rely on type theories, which split players into separate categories. Yet, personality rese...