Identifying Factors Affecting the Immersion and Concentration of Players in Serious Games

Abstract

Serious games are a type of digital games designed for a purpose other than pure entertainment. These games are used in various fields such as defense, education, scientific exploration, health care, emergency management, city planning, engineering, and politics. Given that some of these games are story-driven, it is necessary to accurately identify the factors that affect the concentration and immersion of players. In this paper, we examine the effect of design of challenges, gameplay, aesthetic factors, the player’s previous attitude towards the game, and enjoyment on the player’s immersion. The study is based on structural analysis using data collection through a questionnaire. Through path analysis and regression, we identify important factors and then prioritize them. Our study also shows that game credibility plays an important role as a mediating variable on concentration and immersion. The results of this research have important implications for serious game designers. The test results show that our proposed model has good reliability, validity and correlation.