Group Motivation for Social Games

Abstract

The social aspect plays an important role in the user's motivation in many applications. In this paper design principles for the combination of cooperative and competitive game elements and reducing effects of the social loafing phenomenon are proposed. The concepts were evaluated in a focus group interview and a two-week study where the participants played the prototype of the educational serious game JungleCrowd, which attempts to tackle the issue of deforestation. The results supported the concepts of parallel cooperative teams to add a competitive component and introducing a visible measure for a user's unselfishness to encourage cooperation.