Most game-designers likely stick to the assumption that background music is a design feature for fostering fun and game play. From a psychological point of view, these (intuitive) aspects act upon the intrinsic motivation and the flow experience of players. However, from a pure cognitive perspective on instructional design, background music could also be considered to be redundant information, ...

If we agree with Sega and Nintendo advertising and look at the selling numbers of the game Super Monkey Ball, it seems that its characters, MeeMee, GonGon, Baby and AiAi would have to be some of the most successful computer game characters ever created. The game doesn't have any story, but the monkeys have personality and are ever so cute. Is it possible that the "aesthetics of cuteness" so pre...

In today’s interactive marketplace,microblog has become a powerful social marketing and advertising platform. An important type of information in microblog is consumer generated and forwarded advertising. In our study, we explore advertising effects of different social appeals through microblog. We find that oriented appeals (i.e., other-oriented and self-oriented appeals) are more effective th...