Learn to Play: From Knowledge to Repeated Gameplay

Online games are popular computer applications around the globe. Games are frequently designed to require extensive in-game knowledge to attain in-game goals, so it may be central to continued gameplay. Little is known about how players seek knowledge, internalize knowledge, and subsequently use it to attain in-game goals. We used theories of flow and learning to build a theoretical framework and examined it by using responses from more than four thousand players. We found that encouraging players to seek and internalize in-game knowledge is an effective strategy to increase gameplay. Interestingly, learning satisfaction was more important than knowledge internalization in predicting goal progress, showing a novel insight for game providers to nudge their players in their knowledge searching. We concluded that asking players to search and internalize in-game knowledge may be a more effective strategy than creating their focused immersion to encourage repeated gameplay.