Multiplayer serious games and user experience: A comparison between paper-based and digital gaming experience

Networking and team working are becoming the foundations of human performance in educational, organizational and recreational settings. Here, new communities of practice are being established to promote an engagement economy that will be able to foster innovation and success by sustaining collective well-being and group flourishing. Considered as “positive technologies”, Serious Games (SGs) can support these processes. By fostering continuous learning experiences blended with entertaining affordances, SGs have in fact been able to shape new opportunities for human psychological training and assessment. However, despite the impressive growth of SGs applications, only a few of them have been tested and scientifically considered from an empirical point of view. Our study tries to address this gap, evaluating the potential of digital game technology compared to paper-based applications not only among individuals, but also among groups. The study, conducted with Mind the Game, a multiplayer SG, involved 75 students. Preliminary results showed only minor but fundamental differences between the two experimental conditions. On the one hand, groups who experienced the paper-based condition felt more competent than groups exposed to the digital experience, reporting higher levels of negative feelings too. On the other hand, groups exposed to the digital condition described themselves as more challenged and efficient in a collective way.