Abstract

Online games are popular information platforms, on which users learn how to pass the levels, win over others, or enjoy the game content. Learning process in games is common among users, but it is relatively untouched by the literature, leaving game providers in dark how to leverage technologies to facilitate their learning. Hence, we proposed three affordances, i.e., mechanism, teamwork, and discovery affordances as the technology elements and examined their impacts on various learning routines: learning by imitation, innovation, and exploration, and further to knowledge internalization and game enjoyment. We conducted two studies. The first one is a survey study. We gathered complete responses to two waves of survey from 1,834 online game players to test the model. The results of the first study indicate that three affordances evoke three learning routines, respectively, thus fueling knowledge internalization and enjoyment. The second study is an experiment one. We designed a short and simple game, which manipulated the three affordances and successfully replicated the first study. Practically, our findings offer valuable insights for game makers, i.e., they could make informed design decisions to effectively evoke the corresponding learning approach and thereby facilitate players’ knowledge internalization and heighten their enjoyment.

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