Jeanine Kirchner-Krath

The Covid-19 pandemic has influenced people's views on work, and a significant portion of the global game industry converted to remote work during the pandemic. To explore the status of game development in this pivotal moment, we have conducted semi-structured interviews with 27 immigrant/expatriate game developers ("game expats") in Finland analyzing their migration push and pull on societal, industrial, social, and individual factors. The results indicate societal and industrial factors simultaneously influencing game expats' migration intention, but with an increasing influence of game corporation's role on developers' both on-the-job and off-the-job embeddedness due to an absence of (local) community activities during the pandemic. The data also reveals that game developers are valuing the physical workspace for face-to-face interactions, despite the industrial norm of digital tools and seamless transition to remote work. Furthermore, an alarming stratification and hierarchization within the game industry were identified, which game developers self-dividing in-house versus outsourced workforce even if they were both required to work remotely. This paper contributes to game studies on game developers' experiences as an attempt to investigate the local context of game development. It is also one of the first snapshots of game work practices in Finland during the Covid-19 era.

The virtual communities of PC and console-based Multiplayer Online Games (MOGs) such as Fortnite or League of Legends continue to grow in popularity and attract millions of players around the world. Despite numerous enjoyable outcomes, some concerns have emerged regarding toxic player behavior such as sexism towards female players. In this study, based on the social identity approach and the contact hypothesis, we adopt the perspective of male players to examine the relationships between positive and negative contact and benevolent and hostile sexism in MOGs. We tested our proposed research model with data from 116 male players. In our sample, negative intergroup contact increased both measured forms of sexism (benevolent and hostile), whilst positive intergroup contact had no impact on either, partially confirming predictions from the contact hypothesis. Our work contributes to the discussion on intervention strategies to curb sexism in all its forms in MOGs.

This paper encircles explorative design research in a multiple stakeholder triple helix project concerning circular economy and household recycling. Design ethnography was employed to find implications for outlining a gamification artifact that would facilitate recycling behaviors. We collected our data during 27 weeks by attending two field sites: Site A, project stakeholder meetings and a participatory design workshop, and Site B, semi-structured interviews in the household stakeholders’ residences. Our thematic analysis of the sites’ collected ethnographic record extrapolated two specific categories: Stakeholder requirements and Gamification ruleset, together enfolding five key-themes and various sub-themes that could be used to inform the design of a gamification artifact aimed at recycling. Also, based on our research, we propose two research propositions regarding storytelling and understanding for further gamification design researchers to investigate.

A promising solution to increase user engagement in gamified applications is tailoredgamification design. However, current personalisation relies primarily on user types identified through self-reporting rather than actual behaviour. As a novel approach, the present study used an exploratory machine learning analysis to identify seven clusters of users in a gamified fitness application based on their behavioural data (N = 19,576). The clusters were then conceptually compared to common user typologies in gamification, identifying possible relationships between behavioural user clusters and user types motivated by achievement, sociability, andextrinsic incentives. The findings shed light on nuanced behaviour patterns of user types in thefitness context and how knowing these patterns can inform the way in which tailoredgamification could be implemented to meet the needs of specific types. Thereby, they contributeto the discussion on utilising behavioural data and user typologies for tailored gamification design.

Due to the rapid changes in work environments caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, leadership has shifted from face-to-face to virtual contexts. Accordingly, the new challenges require specific e-leader traits. To summarize the divergent scholarly discussion, we conducted a systematic review and identified distal (i.e., personality, cognitive abilities, motives and attitudes, and core beliefs) and proximal (i.e., skills) attributes of e-leaders. Our results show that some traditional leader traits such as technological, communication, motivational, and organizational skills are also important for e-leadership. However, certain traits become increasingly important in virtual contexts: e-leaders need adaptability and risk- taking to deal with constant change, and higher cultural, social, and emotional intelligence to foster collaboration in diversified teams. In addition, digital technologies require particular change management, coaching, and trust-building skills. Our findings contribute to the current discussion on e-leadership and help practitioners train their leaders towards the identified e-leader profile.

Toxic behavior (TB) is a negative response to in-game frustration in multiplayer online games (MOG) that can ruin the playing experience, causing financial damage to MOG operators. Understanding the drivers of TB is an important step to curb the behavior. In this work, we consult the model of national culture (MNC) as well as demographic variables (e.g., education, gender, and age) as antecedent variables of TB using an exploratory design. We surveyed players of League of Legends and Dota 2 with two samples, based on the MNC, from North America (n=155) and India (n=119). We observed significant cultural differences in TB, with higher levels of self-reported toxicity in the Indian sample. In both samples, consistent with previous findings, age was negatively associated with TB. However surprisingly, there was a statistically significant difference among the two groups in terms of the relationship between education and TB.

Despite increasing scientific interest in explaining how gamification supports positive affect and motivation, behavior change and learning, there is still a lack of an overview of the current theoretical understanding of the psychological mechanisms of gamification. Previous research has adopted several different angles and remains fragmented. Taking both an observational and explanatory perspective, we examined the theoretical foundations used in research on gamification, serious games and game-based learning through a systematic literature review and then discussed the commonalities of their core assumptions. The overview shows that scientists have used a variety of 118 different theories. Most of them share explicitly formulated or conceptual connections. From their interrelations, we derived basic principles that help explain how gamification works: Gamification can illustrate goals and their relevance, nudge users through guided paths, give users immediate feedback, reinforce good performance and simplify content to manageable tasks. Gamification mechanics can allow users to pursue individual goals and choose between different progress paths, while the system can adapt complexity to the user's abilities. Social gamification elements may enable social comparison and connect users to support each other and work towards a common goal.

Gamification has gained scientific attention as a motivational tool for behavior change in various contexts. When designing gamification, several scholars emphasize the importance of tailoring content to the needs of different users, e.g. by using the gamification user types HEXAD typology. From a theoretical point of view, researchers suggest correlations between HEXAD types and certain game elements, but empirical validation of these assumptions is still lacking. Previous studies show limitations either in terms of sample size or comprehensiveness of analysis. Therefore, this study aims to empirically identify game element preferences of different HEXAD types and to validate both the English and a corresponding German version of the HEXAD scale in a quantitative study design with 1,073 participants. The validation shows that the HEXAD scale is a valuable tool for identifying HEXAD types, with some improvements needed for a better model fit. Correlation analysis shows highly significant correlations between HEXAD types and specific game elements. While Philanthropists are motivated by gifting, administrative roles, and knowledge sharing, Free Spirits prefer creativity tools, exploratory tasks, and learning. Both Achievers and Players like challenges, leaderboards, levels, and competition, but Players are additionally attract-ed by extrinsic elements such as achievements, points, and rewards. Socializers like social elements, i.e., teams, social discovery, and social networks. Finally, Disruptors like anarchic gameplay and innovation platforms. In general, the results suggest that the HEXAD typology provides helpful and validated guidance for tailored gamification, and our findings should successfully drive future gamification design to maximize the desired behavioral outcome.

Gamification design has been an important issue for practitioners and researchers since the beginning of research on gamification. With the increasing divergence of gamification in diverse areas, various design principles have been proposed. Yet, existing reviews focus on the synthesis of scientific knowledge about the design process and specific design elements, neglecting the importance of guidelines and principles to make appropriate design choices in order to achieve the desired outcomes. Therefore, this systematic review identifies, analyzes, and categorizes 30 articles that propose design guidelines for gamification and persuasive systems from various application contexts to provide scholars and practitioners with an overview in designing gamified interventions. More than 60 different principles have been identified, which can be divided into user-oriented principles to achieve the intended behavior, system-oriented principles to ensure a hedonic user experience, and context principles. Since the results are primarily conceptual, further research is invited to investigate the effectiveness of different principles based on the context of application to further refine the recommendations for specific use cases of gamification.