290 Chapter 6 As Monument Valley is designed for successful completion and triumphs are more visible (i.e., the avatar’s path becomes visible) than failures, participants with more severe symptoms may experience more pronounced competence after playing Monument Valley compared to participants with less symptoms and more stable self-worth. The current study revealed no negative effect of mental health messaging on autonomy. These results may indicate that the ability to actively choose a game with a mental health message reduces the potential reactance evoked by the messaging. In fact, reactance to persuasive messages can be limited by providing a text confirming the choice freedom of individuals (Bessarabova et al., 2013), and the actual behavioural choice provided here may be even more successful in reestablishing a sense of choice freedom. Alternatively, we may hypothesise that the participants who felt that the mental health message was controlling and who would have therefore experienced less autonomy in the game, selected the entertainment game and so avoided experiencing less autonomy. Additionally, both explanations could work in unison. Moreover, exploratory analyses indicated that when the mental health game was selected, participants with severe mental health symptoms experienced more autonomy than participants without severe symptoms. Thus, suggesting that mental health messaging can stimulate a sense of autonomy. Possibly, participants with severe mental health symptoms felt the mental health aim to be especially in line with their own values and motivations, thus leading to an enhanced sense of autonomy when choosing this option. However, this did not result in the expected accompanying increase in intrinsic motivation. Strengths, Limitations, and Future Directions Besides focusing on a societally relevant research question, the current study has some additional strengths. First, our design is an important strength to highlight. We provided participants with a controlled choice between an explicit mental health and a stealth entertainment message that in reality promoted the same game. Participants were able to freely choose and play the game for as long as they liked (within the study’s time-constraints) creating a genuine game experience and an objective measure of engagement, avoiding self-report biases that come with post-game questionnaires. Second, the counterbalanced presentation of the two trailer designs in which the messages were shown allowed us to separate the effects of messaging from the perceived attractiveness of the trailers. Third, we could relate any differences in game play experiences to messaging because all players played the same commercial
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