Understanding players' mental models are crucial for game designers who wish to successfully integrate player-AI interactions into their game. However, game designers face the difficult challenge of anticipating how players model these AI agents during gameplay and how they may change their mental models with experience. In this work, we conduct a qualitative study to examine how a pair of players develop mental models of an adversarial AI player during gameplay in the multiplayer drawing game iNNk. We conducted ten gameplay sessions in which two players (n = 20, 10 pairs) worked together to defeat an AI player. As a result of our analysis, we uncovered two dominant dimensions that describe players' mental model development (i.e., focus and style). The first dimension describes the focus of development which refers to what players pay attention to for the development of their mental model (i.e., top-down vs. bottom-up focus). The second dimension describes the differences in the style of development, which refers to how players integrate new information into their mental model (i.e., systematic vs. reactive style). In our preliminary framework, we further note how players process a change when a discrepancy occurs, which we observed occur through comparisons (i.e., compare to other systems, compare to gameplay, compare to self). We offer these results as a preliminary framework for player mental model development to help game designers anticipate how different players may model adversarial AI players during gameplay.
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This content will become publicly available on September 1, 2025
Perception of “This is Not a Game”: Definition and Measurement
Participatory narratives are compelling, at least partly because of their ability to help players suspend disbelief in the fictional world in which they engage. Game makers have used the phrase “This is Not a Game” (TINAG) to capture the willingness of players to buy into such narratives in ways that promote productive roleplaying and authentic engagement. Although TINAG has permeated the academic and popular literature on gaming and immersive narratives for decades, there has not been a scientific grounding for the term that provides researchers support for a more rigorous study of the topic. This article makes two primary contributions. First, it provides a definition of the Perception of TINAG based on a systematic literature review of 50 articles that define or describe critical characteristics of TINAG: The Perception of TINAG is a player’s acceptance that they are embedded in and able to influence a fictional story woven into the real world. Second, the paper develops and validates a survey instrument that researchers can use to measure the Perception of TINAG and its three unique components: (1) the player accepts that they are embedded in a fictional story, (2) the player believes their actions influence the narrative, and (3) the player perceives that the story is woven into the real world. We evaluated the instrument using exploratory factor analysis using expert reviewers and game players. We include a table of the articles describing TINAG and our final scale to facilitate future research.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1915620
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10537755
- Publisher / Repository:
- Taylor & Francis
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction
- Volume:
- 40
- Issue:
- 17
- ISSN:
- 1044-7318
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 4725 to 4744
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- “This is not a game” TINAG alternative reality games participatory narratives pervasive games virtual environments PRISMA methodology survey validation
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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