304 Chapter 7 did not exceed the 60 minutes time limit for the experiment we asked them to move onto the questionnaire about 50 minutes into the experiment (i.e., after approximately 40 minutes of gameplay) in case they had not done so. After gameplay, participants filled out questions about, respectively, their mood, intrinsic motivation, autonomy and competence, evaluation of the game and whether they wanted to participate in a raffle to win the game, as well as questions regarding their mindsets, the manipulation check and the promotional message of the trailers. In exchange for their participation, participants received course credits or a €10 gift certificate. Full debriefing was done via email after completion of the study. The Ethics Committee Social Sciences of the university (code number: ECSW2017-3001-461a) approved the study protocol. Experimental Manipulation: Monument Valley, Trailers and Messaging Monument Valley is a commercial 3D puzzle game (Ustwo Games, 2014a) inspired by the optical illusions of M.C. Escher (see Figure 1). The game has received excellent reviews on gaming websites and has won several awards (e.g., the Apple Design Award in 2014 and the Apple iPad game of the year in 2014). The game’s aim is to guide the protagonist, princess Ida, through mazes of impossible objects and optical illusions. Players progress through the game by rotating and manipulating the architecture and geometry of the game world (Ustwo Games, 2014b). The game consists of several levels that could be finished in approximately 1.5 hours. We used Monument Valley because it is designed for players with various levels of game experience (Ustwo Games, 2014b). By balancing difficulty and enjoyment the developers aimed to create a game “that would excite the player, but never frustrate” (https://ustwo.com/work/monument-valley). Although the game was not designed with a therapeutic aim, we believe that presenting the game with a mental health message would be credible because of the relaxed atmosphere and the way in which the game illustrates problem solving. In order to attribute differences in gameplay duration to the mental health message while holding game content equal, two 1-minute trailers were created based on screenshots of Monument Valley. We will refer to these trailers as the detailed and the abstract trailer (see Figure 2). The trailers were different in several aspects to give the impression that the trailers portrayed two different games. The detailed trailer had screenshots of detailed graphical designs, faster music, AR BONNIE font for the trailer text, and an editing style focused on slowly moving across the pictures. The abstract trailer had screenshots of abstract graphical designs, slower music, Gloucester MT font for the trailer
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