Design-Build-Test a Persuasive Minecraft Mod

Ciocarlan et al (Ciocarlan, 2018), developed a wellbeing game that utlised some of Cialdini's well-known principles of influence and persuasion (Cialdini 1984) to persuade players to perform real-world acts of kindness.  The artefact was used to address a number of research questions including the impact on subjective wellbeing.  Although this was a significant piece of ongoing research, the artefact they used would make an interesting muse for a Minecraft mod.  Although Ciocarlan et al's results were inconclusive, the results could be used as a steer to scope-down to something achievable in the timescale for a Computing project.

This would be a DBT project, so research on the effectiveness of the artefact in behaviour change would NOT be required.

Experience of Minecraft modding, as well as keen interests in Persuasion Psychology and Positive Psychology would be needed to do something worthwhile in the timescale available to you.  Are you persuaded?

Reducing Sedentary Behaviour Amongst Gamers

sedentary gamer

The project will address the issue of excess sedentary behaviours typically undertaken by gamers. The project may consists of the following:

 - Undertake a critical literature review of sedentary behaviour interventions and examine their effectiveness
 - Develop a novel technology driven sedentary behaviour intervention on gamers.
 - Evaluate the effectiveness of this newly developed intervention.

Guiding the Mind: Influencing choices players make in a FPS Game

Game Level

Background: When you play a video game, how do you decide where to go next? Which door to go through, or which staircase to go up. Which path to take out in the open? Does this depend on the type of the game, does it depend on your gaming experience or of your native culture? For example, previous research I have conducted shows that players when they come to a T-Junction prefer to turn left if they are UK players, but US players tend to turn right. So can we find some fundamental factors which influence how players make real-time in-game full-on choices?

Aims: (i) To create one or more levels using Unreal 4 which contain specific features to elicit a player response. (ii) To evaluate player response to the features you have created.

Objectives: for you to decide

Lit. Review: (i) In the academic year 2021-22 a number of students chose this topic as their Computing Project. It is imperative that you review their work and results. (ii) Review some technical reports from Dr.C (iii) You can get an enormous amount of information from the GDCs, and this has at least equivalent status to ‘journal articles’ for this project.

Secondary Data: This comes from published work which addresses this topic. Again, I refer you to the 2021-22 computing projects.

Primary Data: You must decide how to collect player movement. This can be done in a number of ways, e.g. (i) you could create Blueprints to log player choices, (ii) you could use the built-in feature of Unreal-4 to create movies of player actions.

Research Questions: for you to decide but must be linked to your primary data collection.

Technology: Unreal-4

Ethical Approval: You will need to complete an enhanced Ethical Approval submission, since this research involves people. A template will be provided.