A Rewarding Framework for Multiplayer Serious Games based on Competitive Reinforcement

To promote a desired behavior in serious games, the rewarding mechanism is an important part of game design that can directly affect the game experience. In single player serious games, the rewarding system is generally performed by negative reinforcement (removing barriers for positive behaviors and creating barriers for negative behaviors) or positive reinforcement (providing facilities to progress in the game for positive behavior). Although research has shown the advantages of positive reinforcement compared to negative reinforcement, this issue is not well studied for multiplayer serious games. To address this problem, we propose a new rewarding framework, which is called competitive reinforcement rewarding. In this framework, a positive behavior of a player results in difficult conditions for other players competing in the game, while a negative behavior of a player facilitates the scoring process of opponents. We have applied this concept on a attention training game based on a multiplayer adversarial car racing game. We performed a comprehensive user study to evaluate the attention level, emotions and attitudes of players in competitive reinforcement versus positive/negative reinforcement versions. Our findings suggest that the competitive reinforcement rewarding framework provides more encouragement for players to increase and maintain their attention level than positive and negative reinforcement rewarding. We also showed that this rewarding framework can affect the emotional state and the behavior of players that can consequently improve their playing experience.