An Empirical Examination of Behavioral Factors in Creative Development of Game Prototypes

In the last few years, several learning programs, workshops, technologies, and activities have been introduced and applied to game prototyping activities. The research goal of this work is to investigate how participants experience game prototyping activities. This paper presents a one-day intensive course consisting of both learning and hands-on sessions with open source software (OSS) tools, tangible materials, and sensor boards for creative development of games prototypes. The intensive course program was developed using the empirical experience of the instructors from numerous prior programs. We present the results of an empirical examination regarding participants’ attitude towards the program. A group of 12 MSc/PhD students, teachers, and designers participated in the program in our empirical evaluation. We used a survey grounded in motivational factors for technology and open-ended questions to obtain both quantitative and qualitative data from the participants. Quantitative statistical analysis indicates that, in our study, participants’ satisfaction and activity’s usefulness are the most influential factors for participants’ intention to attend similar activities in the future. Qualitative analysis suggests improvements on how to prepare the participants, introduce the software used in the courses, and enrich the variety of the materials in our program.