Emotion Through Narrative: Validation for User Engagement in Game Context

Abstract

In the development of a gaming experience guided by the perennial search for user engagement, one of the relevant conditions to ensure and validate, it’s its narrative and context. If we associate this the dissemination of cultural aspects, the development of proposals able to give an engaging experience capable to attracting future visitors, is a relevant aspect to make known not only the place but also its culture. And so, the development of game narrative proposals can have a relevant function in involving potential tourists. Our goal in this study is to evaluate narratives in order to validate the one that will able to give an engaging experience, for later adaptation through a Virtual Reality game experience. The evaluation was performed using the Self-Assessment-Mannequin (SAM), Emotional Engagement Scale (EES) and Cognitive Engagement Scale (CES). After the analysis of the results of these two groups, it was verified that the long narrative was able to arouse great interest on these two groups. To achieve the goal, we have developed two narratives, (i) Neutral Narrative, (ii) Emotional Narrative. We started the analysis of the results for the participants of São Tomé island and it was verified that the results reveal that the longer narrative was able to arouse more interest of them. Considering the adaptation of this narrative in a virtual reality experience in a stand, we developed a second comparative study with an adult population of another country, in this case, the Portuguese. It should be noted that in this second sample we only use the narrative that aroused the greatest interest, the Emotional Narrative. The genesis of the comparison is due to the fact that the experience in a stand is open to a large and varied public, both by age and country of visitors.