How does Juicy Game Feedback Motivate? Testing Curiosity, Competence, and Effectance

'Juicy' or immediate abundant action feedback is widely held to make video games enjoyable and intrinsically motivating. Yet we don’t know why it works: Which motives are mediating it? Which feedback features afford it? In a pre-registered (n=1,699) online experiment, we tested three motives mapping prior practitioner discourse---effectance, competence, and curiosity---and connected design features. Using a dedicated action RPG and a 2x2+control design, we varied feedback amplification, success-dependence, and variability and recorded self-reported effectance, competence, curiosity, and enjoyment as well as free-choice playtime. Structural equation models show curiosity as the strongest enjoyment and only playtime predictor and support theorised competence pathways. Success dependence enhanced all motives, while amplification unexpectedly reduced them, possibly because the tested condition unintentionally impeded players' sense of agency. Our study evidences uncertain success affording curiosity as an underappreciated moment-to-moment engagement driver, directly supports competence-related theory, and suggests that prior juicy game feel guidance on coherent feedback ties to legible action-outcome bindings and graded success as preconditions of positive 'low-level' user experience.

丰盈或即时的丰富操作反馈普遍被认为是使电子游戏愉悦且内在具有激励性的关键因素。然而，我们尚不清楚其背后的原因：何种动机在其中起到了中介作用？哪些反馈特征赋予了其可能性？在一个预先注册的（n=1,699）在线实验中，我们测试了三种与先前实践者话语相对应的动机——效能、胜任力和好奇心，并将它们与设计特征相联系。通过采用专门的动作角色扮演游戏和2x2+控制设计，我们改变了反馈放大、成功依赖性和变异性，并记录了自我报告的效能、胜任力、好奇心和享受程度，以及自由选择的游戏时间。结构方程模型表明，好奇心是影响享受感和唯一游戏时间的最强预测因子，并支持了理论化的胜任力路径。成功依赖性增强了所有动机，而放大却意外地降低了它们，这可能是因为测试条件无意中阻碍了玩家对代理感的感知。我们的研究表明，不确定的成功为好奇心提供了未充分认识的瞬间参与驱动因素，直接支持了与胜任力相关的理论，并暗示了先前关于丰富游戏感觉的指导与清晰的反馈关联以及分级成功是积极‘低级’用户体验的先决条件。