Serious Snacking: A Survival Analysis of how Snacking Mechanics Affect Attrition in a Mobile Serious Game

Title of the Paper

Serious Snacking: A Survival Analysis of how Snacking Mechanics Affect Attrition in a Mobile Serious Game

Paper Information

• Field of Study: Human-Computer Interaction, Serious Game Design, and User Behavior Analysis
• Keywords: Game mechanics, rewards, novelty, blocking mechanics, waiting mechanics, stickiness, user retention, serious games

Research Background and Questions

• Research Questions:

  • Serious games lack clear guidelines for designing sustained interaction. How can they be designed to support frequent but short interaction behaviors (i.e., "snacking game behaviors")?
  • Which game mechanics effectively reduce user attrition and enhance long-term engagement?

• Research Motivation:

  • Serious games aim to promote learning, habit formation, or behavioral change, but many users drop out within a short period.
  • "Snacking game behaviors" in mobile games are well-established in the commercial domain, but how to integrate these design elements into serious games remains unclear.

• Significance:

  • Provides more effective design strategies for serious games aimed at learning or behavioral change.
  • Explores how mechanics design can improve user retention and long-term participation, addressing the lack of design guidance in existing research.

Solution

• Proposed Solution:

  • Based on Alexandrovsky et al.'s "snacking game framework," the study investigates how five game mechanics (reward mechanics, novelty mechanics, completion mechanics, blocking mechanics, waiting mechanics) can be introduced into serious games to support short but frequent gameplay behaviors.

• Innovative Aspects of the Solution:

  • First application of snacking game behavior design in the context of serious games.
  • High ecological validity field experiments (users have autonomous control, non-laboratory setting) to test the effectiveness of these designs.
  • Utilizes survival analysis methods to analyze the impact of these mechanics on user attrition and retention for the first time.

• Implementation Steps:

  1. Game Design and Version Development: Develop a serious math learning game, "Infinitus Algebraica," with versions incorporating the five mechanics.
  2. Short-Term Experimental Validation: Conduct short-term user tests on Amazon Mechanical Turk to evaluate player experience and consistency across versions.
  3. Long-Term Field Experiment: Distribute the game on public mobile platforms, allowing users to participate in a 3-week experiment, recording actual behavior data and user experience.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Findings:

  • Short-term experiments show consistent player experience and difficulty across versions with the five mechanics.
  • Long-term experiment results indicate that completion mechanics and blocking mechanics significantly increase user engagement duration (median survival time), effectively supporting "snacking game behaviors."

• Advantages:

  • Compared to the baseline game, versions with the five mechanics improve user activity frequency and extend participation duration.
  • Completion mechanics, in particular, enhance users' sense of purpose through task chains and goals, satisfying autonomy and relatedness needs.

• Experimental and Analytical Results:

  • Survival analysis reveals that completion mechanics have the longest median survival time, ranging from 20-25 days.
  • Blocking mechanics reduce single-session gameplay time and limit excessive immersion, promoting frequent and brief gaming patterns.
  • Kaplan-Meier estimation and Cox regression model analyses validate the individual effectiveness of the mechanics and identify significant impacts of game versions and certain performance metrics on user attrition.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  • Small sample size prevents definitive conclusions; larger-scale validation is needed.
  • The study examines the effects of individual mechanics; future research could explore the combined impact of multiple mechanics.
  • Expanding the study to multiplayer environments could investigate the potential enhancement of user retention and behavior through social mechanics.

Conclusion and Significance

This paper introduces the "snacking game behavior" framework into serious game design, demonstrating through design and experimentation that specific game mechanics (such as completion and blocking) significantly reduce attrition and support long-term user engagement. The findings provide robust data-driven insights for serious game design and pave the way for future research to develop more effective tools for learning and behavioral improvement.