This paper aims to investigate the relationship between advergame design, advergame experience and consumer behaviour across cultures. For this purpose, a study was designed to compare and contrast behaviour patterns across Brazilian and British cultures. An advergame (Colheita de Café (CC)), featuring the Fairtrade mark was developed through a semiotics approach. Participants from both Brazil (N=30) and the UK (N=34) were invited to play the advergame and answer a questionnaire before and after gameplay. The results indicate that Brazilians felt more familiar with the visual elements incorporated by the advergame when compared to British consumers. Brazilians also had more favourable attitudes towards the brand, suggesting that visual familiarity could influence consumer behaviour. Contrary to our expectations, both Brazilian and British respondents had the same attitudes towards the advergame, showing that visual familiarity did not particularly influence the advergame experience. The main contribution of this paper is the suggestion that visual familiarity could influence consumer behaviour across cultures. We expect that our findings can be used in future research that examines cultural nuances in advergame design.

This paper explores avatar roles and design principles in helping to develop motivation in game environments. Different avatar applications could influence the experience of players in at least three ways: as a customisation tool, game strategy, and personal identification. These possible influences could be enhanced by the application of avatar design for motivational purposes, reflected through the integration between game design elements and the avatar implementation. This paper aims to situate avatar design as a design strategy to motivate users to change their behaviour and promote adherence to new habits. We start by reviewing the current papers that address avatar design utilisations for motivation in to Serious Games. Then, we analyse the main elements in gameful applications (e.g. Re-Mission, Pain Squad, CodeInGame and Monster Manor), in order to understand and explore the design of avatars. The analysis is followed by the development of a model for Avatar Design in Motivational contexts (ADAM), which could be used to provide the necessary guidance for designers and developers of gameful systems for motivational environments.