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Abstract
Increasingly, media technologies that employ avatars and embodied conversational agents are becoming intimately involved in human lives, as users communicate within and with such technologies. Persuasive video games are one example, or test case, of how this type of technology will be accepted and used. Due to the potential effects of these games on consumers’ well-being, a first step is to ensure that consumers’ concerns and responses to such games are understood—so that they can be addressed. Therefore, this dissertation project empirically assesses the user experience (UX), affective responses, and perceived health outcomes associated with two recent commercial off-the-shelf video games, i.e. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH) and Ring Fit Adventure, which were released during the COVID-19 pandemic when the general public’s physical, mental, and social well-being were severely challenged. Study 1 combines computational Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques and qualitative thematic analysis to evaluate the perceived effects of a social simulation game (i.e., ACNH) on players’ social interaction and coping of pandemic-related loss and stress during pandemic lockdowns. Study 2 analyzes online discussions of Ring Fit Adventure in a gamer community and specifies health behavioral outcomes from user-generated content. The two studies provide methodological implications for UX evaluation using computational mixed methods, practical implications for persuasive game design, and theoretical implications for bridging health communication, persuasive technology, human-computer interaction, and computer-mediated communication. From an equity perspective, this dissertation project concludes by discussing how the digital divide and technoableism may structurally marginalize certain groups, if we use digital gaming to address isolation, mental and physical health in the post-pandemic future.
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