6 265 EXPLICIT MESSAGING PROMOTES GAME SELECTION with some level of mental health problems, we selected participants with elevated mental health symptoms. Finally, the current study assessed stress and anxiety symptoms, in addition to depressive symptoms, to broaden the scope of our understanding and inform future prevention efforts. Our primary aim was to test how entertainment versus mental health messaging influenced the choice and experience of a video game in young adults with elevated mental health symptoms. Participants chose a game to play after viewing two trailers, one for each type of messaging. We were able to directly link messaging to differences in choice and experience as both trailers portrayed the same game, unbeknownst to the participants. Following gameplay, game experience was assessed. This allowed us to examine the effect of entertainment and mental health messaging on eight dependent variables in the whole sample. We studied the effect of trailer message on three indicators of game appeal: (1) game choice; (2) perceived attractiveness and (3) perceived fun of the game. Additionally, the effect of game choice was examined on five prominent aspects of game experience, that is: (4) gameplay duration; (5) intrinsic motivation; (6) autonomy; (7) competence and (8) change in affect. Based on the theoretical literature and lack of previous empirical evidence, we made no predictions about how the messaging would influence game choice, preference for the games (i.e., perceived attractiveness and fun of the games from the trailers), the duration of gameplay nor about changes in affect. However, based on previous results (Poppelaars, Lichtwarck-Aschoff, et al., 2018), we expected gameplay after either trailer selection to result in similar levels of intrinsic motivation and competence and to improve affect equally. Furthermore, we hypothesised that participants would experience equal levels of autonomy because all participants selected the game they played. The secondary aim of this study was to explore how severity and type of mental health symptoms influence game choice and experience. Thus, we explored if symptom severity or symptom type (i.e., depression, anxiety, and stress) moderated the effects of messaging on the same eight variables named above. Although there currently is no consensus on the relation between symptom severity and professional help-seeking, most evidence suggests that more severe symptoms are related to seeking more professional help (e.g., Oliver et al., 2005; Merikangas et al., 2011; Sawyer et al., 2012). Therefore, we hypothesised that youth with severe symptoms would select the mental health game more often. As the personal relevance of the mental health game is higher for those with severe mental health symptoms compared to those with less severe symptoms, we hypothesised that this choice is more intrinsically motivated and related to higher levels of autonomy. Furthermore, based on
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