Aniek Wols

268 Chapter 6 entertainment game and one trailer portrayed the game as beneficial for players’ mental health. The trailers were designed to convince participants that two separate games were being promoted and the combination of trailer design and message was counterbalanced across participants. To achieve the latter, participants were randomised using a blocked randomisation to receive trailer A including the entertainment message and trailer B including the mental health message or to see the same trailers with the messages interchanged. After viewing the trailers, participants were asked to select the game they would like most and were reminded that they could win that same game. After choosing a game, participants rated the attractiveness and fun of each game based on the trailer, before they were instructed to play Monument Valley 1 (Ustwo Games, 2014a). Following gameplay, participants completed questionnaires on their affect, intrinsic motivation, autonomy and competence and questions about the manipulation check, trailer message and questionnaires not included in the current study. Participants were provided with study credits or a gift certificate worth €10. Once testing was completed in November 2017, debriefing was done through email and 10 participants were randomly selected to receive a reimbursement for purchasing Monument Valley 1 and 2 (Ustwo Games, 2014a, 2017). This study was approved by the ethical committee of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Radboud University (ECSW2017-3001-461). Monument Valley and Messaging The original Monument Valley game released in 2014 (Ustwo Games, 2014a) is an award winning commercial puzzle game with optical illusions inspired by the art of M. C. Escher and can be played on smartphones and tablets (Figure 1). This game was designed to create an optimal balance between difficulty and pleasure, as well as to allow all players to be able to complete all levels (Ustwo Games, 2014b) making it accessible for participants with various levels of gameplay experience. Although the game was not designed with a therapeutic aim, players may believe that it was when it is presented that way, because of the relaxed atmosphere and the way the game illustrates problem solving, an adaptive technique for coping with stress and negative emotions (i.e., the player finds solutions for the game’s challenges by literally looking at the challenge from several angles). Indeed, participant comments following gameplay indicated that the mental health claim was credible (e.g., one participant recommended the mental health game to other participants because ‘it will relax all stressed out students’).

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw