Improvement of Imaginative Immersion in Role Playing Serious Game using Appreciative Game Activity

Experience and interactivity are the main advantages of serious game as a learning tool. Immersion is the core of game experience, which consists of sensory-based immersion, challenge-based immersion, and imaginative-based immersion. The imaginative-based immersion plays important roles to engage player emotionally in the gameplay. However, most of serious game doesn't have solid concept on the immersion element, resulted in lack of player's personal connection with the game. Most of the research also suggest that immersion is just about virtual reality technology. This study aims to provide the framework using appreciative game activity to improve the imaginative-based immersion in serious game. Appreciative game activity is appreciative learning-based game activity design. There are four stages in appreciative learning, discovery, dream, design, and destiny. A Role-Playing Serious Game with the theme of English language education is developed as a testbed for the framework. Evaluation using Game Experience Questionnaire shows the improvement of the imaginative immersion from 3.14 to 3.29.