Taken together, our results advance our understanding of the dynamics of fun in realistic environments. They also emphasize the importance of using realistic, game-like environments together with highly-controlled experiments to advance our theories of human motivation & learning.

4/4

We found that players preferred levels of intermediate difficulty, but additional factors also emerged: Players’ success and expectations of difficulty seemed to have an influence on their enjoyment. That’s why we created and simulated two controlled paradigms to confirm these factors.

3/4

Previous studies proposed that people enjoy acting in intermediate difficult environments that provide the most learning progress. However, they mostly focused on simple paradigms. That’s why we use three game datasets with in total ~260.000 levels and ~1.800.000 votes to have a closer look.

2/4

What influences whether people have fun with a task?

Our paper “Leveling up fun: learning progress, expectations and success influence enjoyment in video games” with @thecharleywu.bsky.social and @ericschulz.bsky.social now in Scientific Reports!

rdcu.be/eI069

Paper summary below 1/4

What a day. Our foundation model of cognitive science is out in Nature:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@marcelbinz.bsky.social's thread:
bsky.app/profile/marc...

Centaur is featured by the NYT:
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/s...

We got featured in a Nature views:
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I had so much fun being a guest on the @behindthescreens.bsky.social podcast!
🤩

If you're curious about how we use games in research (and you understand German), check out their latest episode!

Our workshop at RLDM on intrinsic motivation is still accepting abstracts for lightning talks - two weeks left to submit! More info on our website: sites.google.com/view/pimbaa2...

Come join us in Dublin! 🤩

@jramirezruiz.bsky.social
@surabhisnath.bsky.social
@becketebs.bsky.social