In spite of the unprecedented popularity to use innovative gaming concepts within the educational context in order to promote active learning, engage people and solve motivational problems, there is an emerging body of research work arguing that gamification is not effective to increase neither the students engagement nor the learning outcomes. In this research paper, an empirical study is conducted to explore how gamification can firstly affect the student learning engagement and the interactivity level with e-learning technologies. Secondly, whether it can be considered as a driving thrust to support sustained learning. A question board is designed and implemented to enable students ask and answer questions related to their taught modules where academic staff can also contribute and validate the most correct answers. The acquisition of data is performed through a period of 10 months in order to investigate the gamification impact over time. The gamified platform was integrated with the online e-learning portal of a university where the adoption of e-learning is considered extremely poor. The obtained results have revealed that gamification can be considered as a valuable tool to entice users for the uptake of educational systems and increase their interactivity and engagement.

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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.

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This paper conducts a contemporary and inclusive review of initial applications of gamification to various management fields, such as finance, corporate governance, risk management, human resource management, etc. It defines and contextualizes gamification within the field of management. This allows to understand the main elements of a general gamified system and its main applications. Via a systematic review of 203 studies addressing management contexts and gamification, it develops a holistic framework for the analysis of gamification in management areas. The study concludes by setting out a list of questions to direct future research in order to increase the impacts of this innovative and strategic research area within businesses and organizations.

The growing popularity of gamification in the global environment increases the importance of balancing factors that affect user engagement, satisfaction and acceptability in different cultures. While the main motivation behind gamifying software systems is to improve user engagement, an adverse effect might happen if the design and functionality did not consider users' cultural requirements. This paper presents a hybrid cultural design model for localising Arabic systems that takes into consideration the visual elements of user interfaces as well as the functionality and cultural factors of Arabic countries. We start by introducing design guidelines for localising Arabic systems and then evaluate the designed localisation criteria by conducting questionnaires and interviews. We base our studies on the factors that could affect the productivity levels of software engineers who use gamified software project management tools in their workplace. 63 software engineers participated in a mood board based questionnaire composed by different visual elements, rewards and achievements. To validate our findings, seven experts were interviewed. Those were software developers and designers. Based on our results, we propose a hybrid cultural design model, composed of personalised elements, localised elements and non-localised elements. This paper also proposes the first comprehensive model for localising Arabic gamified systems.

This paper presents the findings from a study of advergame design elements paying particular attention to cross-cultural consumer attitudes towards advergames and sponsored brands. From a thorough literature review, an integrated framework for advergames across cultures (CAKE) has been designed, composed of game design elements, brand perspectives and cultural characteristics. Utilising the CAKE framework, 40 mobile advergames from Brazil and the UK were studied through a content analysis, followed by an interview of 22 game players from both countries. Our findings illustrate a cultural difference in the attitudes towards advergames and preferences regarding familiar and popular elements inside the advergame. It is felt that the CAKE framework may prove itself suitable for the development of cross-cultural design in advergaming and future research in the area. Implications for advertisers, designers and developers are discussed.

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