Designing Intuitive Environments: Creative Interaction, Educational Affordances, and Co-Design in Immersive Serious Gameo-Designin Immersive Serious Game

Abstract

Virtual Reality (VR) environments offer immersive experiences that deeply engage users with educational content. While trivia-based serious games successfully blend learning and entertainment, their implementation within VR remains underexplored. A critical gap exists in understanding how VR trivia games foster content knowledge, sustain motivation, and influence knowledge acquisition; empirical comparisons between VR and mobile formats are also lacking. This study addresses these gaps by presenting the design, development, and evaluation of Trivia World Quest, a VR serious game developed via a co-design approach. A comparative user study (N = 43) revealed that VR yielded significantly higher immersion, natural mapping, and visual engagement than its mobile counterpart. Additionally, a one-way ANCOVA, controlling for baseline knowledge discrepancies, demonstrated that the VR platform yielded significantly higher post-test knowledge retention than the mobile condition.