Abstract
Personalization, in the realm of Serious Games, is the extent to which users believe that the digital environment is tailored to their characteristics and preferences. This belief can have major repercussions for a user’s experience with the game and can subsequently be used to maximize the return on investment for serious game designers. Other factors that influence users’ personalization in games include how the game affects the users’ perception of self, presence in the game, and social relationships developed in the game. Users’ avatars influence all of these factors. This goal of this paper is to examine the research done into avatars and personalization and presents it in the context of serious games research.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Peirce, N., Conlan, O., Wade, V.: Adaptive Educational Games: Providing Non-Invasive Personalised Learning Experiences. In: 2nd IEEE International Conference on Digital Games and Intelligent Toys Based Education, pp. 28–35. IEEE Press, New York (2008)
Moreno, R., Mayer, R.E.: Personalized Messages That Promote Science Learning in Virtual Environments. J. Edu. Psych. 96, 165–173 (2004)
Bailey, R., Wise, K., Bolls, P.: How avatar customizability affects children’s arousal and subjective presence during junk food-sponsored online video games. Cyber. Psych. & Beh. 12, 277–283 (2009)
Krämer, N.: Psychological research on embodied conversational agents: The case of pedagogical agents. J. Media Psych: Theories, Methods, and Applications 22, 47–51 (2010)
Lewis, M.: The effect of learning type and avatar similarity on learning outcomes in educational video games. Dissertations & Theses: Full Text 70 (2010)
Jin, S.: Avatars mirroring the actual self versus projecting the ideal self: The effects of self priming on interactivity and immersion in an exergame. Wii. Fit Cyber. Psych. & Beh. 12, 761–765 (2009)
Bessière, K., Seay, A., Kiesler, S.: The Ideal elf: Identity Exploration in World of Warcraft. Cyber. Psych. & Beh. 10, 530–535 (2007)
Jin, S., Park, N.: Parasocial interaction with my avatar: Effects of interdependent self-construal and the mediating role of self-presence in an avatar-based console game. Wii. Cyber. Psych. & Beh. 12, 723–727 (2009)
Vasalou, A., Joinson, A., Bänziger, T., Goldie, P., Pitt, J.: Avatars in social media: Balancing accuracy, playfulness and embodied messages. Int. J. Hum Comp. Stud. 66, 801–811 (2008)
Corradi-Dell’Acqua, C., Ueno, K., Ogawa, A., Cheng, K., Rumiati, R.I., Iriki, A.: Effects of shifting perspective of the self: an fMRI study. Neuroimage 40, 1902–1911 (2008)
Kenny, R.F., Gunter, G.A.: Endogenous fantasy-based serious games: Intrinsic motivation and learning. Int. J. Soc. Sci. 2, 8–13 (2007)
Van Eck, R.: Digital game based learning: It’s not just the digital natives who are restless. Educause Review 41, 17–30 (2006)
Chen, J.: Flow in Games (and Everything Else). Communications of the ACM 50, 31–34 (2007)
Lim, S., Reeves, B.: Computer agents versus avatars: Responses to interactive game characters controlled by a computer or other player. Int. J. Hum-Comp. Stud. 68, 57–68 (2010)
Feldon, D.F., Kafai, Y.B.: Mixed methods for mixed reality: Understanding users’ avatar activities in virtual worlds. Edu. Tech. R&D 56, 575–593 (2008)
Krämer, N.C., Bente, G.: Personalizing e-learning. The social effects of pedagogical agents. Edu. Psych. Rev. 22, 71–87 (2010)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Lakhmani, S., Bowers, C. (2011). Reflected in a Liquid Crystal Display: Personalization and the Use of Avatars in Serious Games. In: Shumaker, R. (eds) Virtual and Mixed Reality - Systems and Applications. VMR 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6774. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22024-1_26
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22024-1_26
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-22023-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-22024-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)