The Role of Stress and Repeated Gameplay in Players’ Motivation and Engagement in a Cognitive Assessment Game

Cognitive assessment games show promise for monitoring players’ mental and cognitive health; however, their long-term effectiveness is threatened by diminishing player retention over repeated sessions in real-life settings. To facilitate better long-term deployment of cognitive games, we examined two key potential challenges: pre-game stress, and repeated game play. We conducted an experiment with the cognitive assessment game Tunnel Runner, which was played across two sessions. Before the second playing session, 93 participants were randomly assigned to undergo a Virtual Reality experience that involved either a validated stress-induction or a control procedure. Despite the effectiveness of the stress induction, players’ self-reported engagement and motivation in the game tended to show resilience to stress. Nevertheless, most aspects of players’ self-reported experience, including curiosity, enjoyment, and sense of reward, diminished between sessions. Our work provides early evidence that players’ experience in cognitive games is resilient to stress, yet raises concerns regarding its endurance over repeated play. This highlights the need for design solutions that sustain players’ motivation and engagement over time. Based on our findings, we propose game design approaches for creating stress-resilience and for enhancing the enduring appeal of cognitive games used for long-term cognitive assessment.