Leveling up fun: learning progress, expectations, and success influence enjoyment in video games.

ABSTRACT: What factors influence how much fun people have when engaging in inherently enjoyable tasks? Several theories predict that people will have the most fun in environments of intermediate difficulty because these environments usually offer the most progress in learning about the world. Past studies have frequently focused on simple experimental paradigms in which learning was still instrumental for later tasks. Here, we put these theories to a test in three large and realistic video game data sets: a puzzle game (with 7,994 levels and 376,341 votes), a racing game (138,662 levels and 614,770 votes), and a platformer game (115,032 levels and 795,313 votes). As predicted, people preferred levels of intermediate difficulty in all games. Yet, additional factors influencing people's enjoyment also

SUBMITTER: Brandle F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12488971 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature