Good vs. Evil: Investigating the effect of game premise in a smart home security educational game

Abstract

While smart home devices are spreading rapidly, the privacy and security of users are key concerns. Many users struggle in acquiring and applying security recommendations to protect against malicious behavior in smart home systems, which can cause users to lose interest in this topic. Game-based learning is a powerful practice to increase the motivation of users in an entertaining and intuitive way. In this paper, we explore the effect of game premise on user's motivation and performance in an educational game. We designed a game with the aim to enlighten users about smart home security challenges. We developed two versions of the game with opposing game premises, a good and an evil, and compared them in a between-group experiment. The results show high motivation ratings in both versions of the game towards solving smart home security problems. However, there are no significant differences between the opposing game premises.