Personality Type Indicator Models in Serious Games: <i>A case study in a Surgical Navigation Game</i>

Abstract

Serious games are a popular concept in both the research and commercial areas. It is agreed that the concept refers to the use of computer games without the main purpose of pure entertainment. In addition to being entertaining, they have some additional educational or training objectives as well. Serious games are used in different areas such as military, government, educational, corporate, and healthcare. However, according to their individual differences, it is not always possible to provide such an educational environment that fits expectations and preferences of all audience. Hence, personalization is becoming an essential issue in serious game environments, which focus on a human-centered paradigm aiming to provide adaptive and personalized services to the users according to the context. However, how such a personalization should be affectively implemented in the design of serious games is a challenge. This study aims to better understand the affect of personality types on game play. For this purpose, a game-based simulation environment which also records all details of the player during the performance of several tasks in the game play was used. Twenty nine students were asked to play the simulation game. Additionally, their personality types were collected based on the theory of psychological types by Carl Jung, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) which measures personality preferences as defined by Four Dichotomous pairs of mental functions or attitudes. The correlation between these personality types and individual performance measures of players during the game play was analyzed. However no significant correlation between game parameters and the players' personality types has been recorded. This may be because of the limited number of participants that need to be examined in the future studies.