The benefits of using narrative gamification to present a word learning task

<p dir="ltr">Gamification can increase user motivation and enjoyment, leading to increased performance. Unfortunately, many gamified interventions fail due to a lack of consideration for the theory behind it and the game elements included. This study investigated the benefits of narrative gamification to assess whether it would have an effect on participants' (<i>N</i> = 36, <i>M</i>_<em>age</em> = 31.42, <i>SD</i> = 15.04) performance, intrinsic motivation, experience with the task, and depth of processing in a Swahili-English word-pair memory task. Participants were randomly allocated across three conditions: control, graphics (gamified aesthetics), and narrative (the task was contextualised in a narrative placing participants in a code-breaking mystery scenario, together with the gamified aesthetic). Bayesian independent samples <i>t</i>-tests assessed whether the narrative manipulation had any effect, compared to the control and graphics conditions, returning anecdotal evidence for the null hypothesis with small effects for all analyses. Given the small sample, the more data is required to inform confident conclusions.</p>