288 Chapter 6 with the escape model (Perse, 1998; Oliver, 2009). Both motivations appear plausible. One participant explained her choice for the entertainment game indicating ‘If everybody likes it, it is very likely I will like it too’ supporting a mood management perspective. Whereas another participant argued the mental health game ‘looks frustrating and more complicated’ supporting an escape perspective. This suggests that explicit mental health games emphasizing positive game experiences would be even more attractive. Finally, self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000) suggests participants may have chosen the entertainment game as the mental health game was not in line with their intrinsic motivations (e.g., one participant explained ‘I did not feel stressed or bad at the moment’). Though for some individuals beliefs about personal relevance may depend on their current state, suggesting that the mental health game may be selected at another point in time, others may never identify reducing stress as an intrinsic need. Thus, proclaiming to meet multiple needs may increase the chances of mental health games matching individual needs. Moreover, it will be valuable to further study motivations for mental health or entertainment game selection to inform strategies to attract even more young adults to mental health games. Game Experience Besides testing the influence of messaging on game choice, the current study also looks at how the selected message influenced game experience. Young adults played Monument Valley for approximately 28 min regardless of game choice, mental health symptom severity or type. Additionally, as hypothesised, young adults who selected the mental health game experienced similar intrinsic motivation, autonomy and competence compared to those who selected the entertainment trailer. In contrast, exploratory analyses showed that although young adults who selected the entertainment message experienced similar autonomy, participants with severe symptoms who selected the mental health message felt more autonomous compared to participants without severe symptoms, confirming our expectation. In a similar vein but contrary to our expectations, participants with severe symptoms felt more competent than participants without severe symptoms, regardless of whether they believed the game was an entertainment or mental health game. Finally, as expected, the current study shows that overall participants improved in affect over time, regardless of the message they selected. However, exploratory results suggest that this effect was driven by participants with severe depressive symptoms rather than those with no to moderate depressive symptoms or other severe symptoms. Thus, although we had expected
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