"This Game Is Girly!" Perceived Enjoyment and Student Acceptance of Edutainment

Serious video games that enable students to engage into topics as mathematics through an enjoyment process are becoming increasingly popular. However, there is lack of empirical evidence on the relationship between students‟ enjoyment and their intention to use serious video games. This study is about a storytelling serious video game, which has the goal to improve the mathematical skills of players. The game has a plot, featuring a story in which a mission is assigned to the player. The story and the mission are used to stimulate the students‟ interest and motivate them to play the game. The empirical study is a controlled experiment to which 46 Gymnasium (middle school) students participated. Results confirmed the positive effects of the enjoyment on students‟ intention to use storytelling serious games. Notably, we found that gender has a moderating effect on the relationships between enjoyment and intention to use the game. The results of this study suggest that games with a storytelling component might be attractive to girls.