Michael Sailer

Who they are

Sailer studies learning and the use of game design in education. The 2017 paper was written with Hense, Mayr and Mandl.

This page records only what the papers and their published records state. Biography beyond the cited work is not given here.

Key papers

How gamification motivates: an experimental study of the effects of specific game design elements on psychological need satisfaction (2017), with Hense, Mayr and Mandl. In a randomised experiment in an online simulation, badges, leaderboards and performance graphs raised people's sense of competence and their sense that the task was meaningful. Avatars, meaningful stories and teammates raised the sense of social relatedness. The attempt to raise people's sense of freedom of decision did not work as intended.

Key ideas

The central idea is that game elements are not one thing. Different elements map onto different needs in self-determination theory, and a designer can choose them accordingly. The finding contrasts with Elisa Mekler's 2017 study, in which game elements raised the amount of work done without changing intrinsic motivation, and the difference may lie in whether an element reports real progress or simply rewards volume.

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