TAMAGO: Full Game Art Gameful System for Animation Thesis Supervision
Main Article Content
Abstract
Final project supervision platforms in higher education typically adopt administrative interfaces that may underserve students in creative disciplines whose projects unfold as months-long narrative journeys. This paper presents TAMAGO (Tugas Akhir Mahasiswa GO!), a gameful supervision system built around full game art aesthetics, visual novel dialogue, and an egg-hatching metaphor tied to animation production pipeline stages. A formative single-case evaluation was conducted with seventeen undergraduate animation students at a state arts institute in Indonesia. Each session ran 60 to 75 minutes and included approximately twelve minutes of prototype interaction across five task scenarios, followed by four quantitative measures (System Usability Scale, a twenty-seven-item gameful experience inventory, short User Experience Questionnaire, and a domain-specific aesthetic experience and metaphor scale) and a semi-structured interview analyzed thematically. TAMAGO achieved a mean usability score of 74.4 (Good), hedonic quality of 2.65 and pragmatic quality of 2.06 (both Excellent), aesthetic experience of 6.33 and metaphor perception of 6.27 on seven-point scales, and intention to use of 6.00. Aesthetic experience showed a strong association with intention to use in this sample. Because these domain-specific aesthetic and metaphor items were adapted rather than validated through confirmatory factor analysis, and because scores clustered near the top of the scale, their discriminant validity from hedonic quality remains uncertain, and the associations are best read as exploratory rather than as stable effect sizes. Three themes emerged from interviews: the egg metaphor was read as an experiential mirror, full game art functioned as affective counterweight to standard campus software, and animation students engaged with the system as craft critics. This work is positioned as a design case with exploratory empirical grounding, illustrating that full game art can achieve acceptable usability alongside rich aesthetic design within one educational supervision context.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication. The work is simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits others to copy, distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the work, even commercially, provided proper attribution is given to the original authors and the journal as the source of first publication.
- Authors may enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal’s published version of the work (e.g., posting to institutional repositories, inclusion in books), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories, personal websites, or preprint servers) prior to and during the submission process. This practice can foster productive exchanges and may lead to earlier and increased citation of the published work.
User Rights:
All articles published Open Access will be immediately and permanently free for everyone to read and download. We are continuously working with our author communities to select the best choice of license options, currently being defined for this journal as follows: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
References
[1] M. Jehanghir, K. Ishaq, and R. A. Akbar, “Effect of learners’ autonomy on academic motivation and university students’ grit,” Educ. Inf. Technol. (Dordr)., vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 4159–4196, Mar. 2024, doi: 10.1007/s10639-023-11976-2.
[2] J. Koivisto and J. Hamari, “The rise of motivational information systems: A review of gamification research,” Int. J. Inf. Manage., vol. 45, pp. 191–210, Apr. 2019, doi: 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2018.10.013.
[3] S. Deterding, D. Dixon, R. Khaled, and L. Nacke, “From game design elements to gamefulness,” in Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments, New York, NY, USA: ACM, Sep. 2011, pp. 9–15. doi: 10.1145/2181037.2181040.
[4] J. Hamari, J. Koivisto, and H. Sarsa, “Does Gamification Work? -- A Literature Review of Empirical Studies on Gamification,” in 2014 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, IEEE, Jan. 2014, pp. 3025–3034. doi: 10.1109/HICSS.2014.377.
[5] R. Patrício, A. C. Moreira, and F. Zurlo, “Enhancing design thinking approaches to innovation through gamification,” European Journal of Innovation Management, vol. 24, no. 5, pp. 1569–1594, Oct. 2021, doi: 10.1108/EJIM-06-2020-0239.
[6] M. Sailer and L. Homner, “The Gamification of Learning: a Meta-analysis,” Educ. Psychol. Rev., vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 77–112, Mar. 2020, doi: 10.1007/s10648-019-09498-w.
[7] R. Hunicke, M. Leblanc, and R. Zubek, “MDA: A formal approach to game design and game research,” in AAAI Workshop - Technical Report, 2004.
[8] A. Suh, C. M. K. Cheung, M. Ahuja, and C. Wagner, “Gamification in the Workplace: The Central Role of the Aesthetic Experience,” Journal of Management Information Systems, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 268–305, Jan. 2017, doi: 10.1080/07421222.2017.1297642.
[9] C. V. H. Schmidt, J. Manske, and T. C. Flatten, “Experience matters: The mediating role of gameful experience in the relationship between gamified competition and perceived innovation culture,” Creativity and Innovation Management, vol. 32, no. 4, pp. 551–567, Dec. 2023, doi: 10.1111/caim.12572.
[10] D. Possler and C. Klimmt, “Towards a Model of the Entertaining Appeal of Video Game Aesthetics,” in Computerspielforschung: Interdisziplinäre Einblicke in das digitale Spiel und seine kulturelle Bedeutung, Verlag Barbara Budrich, 2023, pp. 141–158. doi: 10.2307/jj.1791917.9.
[11] L.-C. E. Mai, S. Long, Y. Yuan, and K. Fu, “Analysing of players’ perceptions on game aesthetics,” Front. Commun. (Lausanne)., vol. 10, Nov. 2025, doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2025.1622613.
[12] I. Ananda Saputra and A. Januarsa, “The Analysis & Exploration of Emotional Attachment in Video Game Character Design,” Journal of Games, Game Art, and Gamification, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 115–120, Dec. 2025, doi: 10.21512/jggag.v10i3.12784.
[13] N. Tractinsky, A. S. Katz, and D. Ikar, “What is beautiful is usable,” Interact. Comput., vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 127–145, Dec. 2000, doi: 10.1016/S0953-5438(00)00031-X.
[14] Troy, G. S. Nugroho, K. Widiyanti, and S. G. Gunanto, “Gamification-Driven Management Information System: A Design Approach for Enhancing Students’ Final Project Supervision,” Journal of Information Technology and its Utilization (JITU), vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 53–60, Dec. 2025, doi: 10.56873/jitu.8.2.6038.
[15] E. D. Mekler, F. Brühlmann, A. N. Tuch, and K. Opwis, “Towards understanding the effects of individual gamification elements on intrinsic motivation and performance,” Comput. Human Behav., vol. 71, pp. 525–534, Jun. 2017, doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2015.08.048.
[16] S. Deterding, D. Dixon, R. Khaled, and L. Nacke, “From game design elements to gamefulness: Defining ‘gamification,’” in Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments, MindTrek 2011, 2011. doi: 10.1145/2181037.2181040.
[17] F. Jafarkhani, F. Barani, K. Nawaser, H. Rashidi, and B. Gharleghi, “Factors affecting the aesthetic experiences in educational games: A qualitative investigation,” Journal of Economy and Technology, vol. 2, pp. 200–207, Nov. 2024, doi: 10.1016/j.ject.2024.07.002.
[18] S. Naureen and S. Faiz, “Aesthetic Design and In-Game Purchases, with Considerations of Hedonic, Utilitarian, and Social Motivations,” 2024. doi: 10.2139/ssrn.4918874.
[19] B. Bullock, J. A. Landay, and M. S. Bernstein, “Comparing Design Metaphors and User-Driven Metaphors for Interaction Design,” in Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, New York, NY, USA: ACM, Apr. 2026, pp. 1–16. doi: 10.1145/3772318.3790676.
[20] M. McLain, “Towards a signature pedagogy for design and technology education: a literature review,” Int. J. Technol. Des. Educ., vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 1629–1648, Jul. 2022, doi: 10.1007/s10798-021-09667-5.
[21] F. Ferdianto, M. N. Masrek, M. N. Ismail, N. Anwar, and Y. Kurniawan, “Critical Success Factors on Gamification to Support the Learning Process in University,” Environment-Behaviour Proceedings Journal, vol. 7, no. SI10, pp. 89–96, Nov. 2022, doi: 10.21834/ebpj.v7iSI10.4135.
[22] J. Brooke, “SUS: A ‘Quick and Dirty’ Usability Scale. (Jordan PW, Thomas B, Weerdmeester BA, McClelland AL ed.),” in Usability Evaluation In Industry, 1996.
[23] R. Eppmann, M. Bekk, and K. Klein, “Gameful Experience in Gamification: Construction and Validation of a Gameful Experience Scale [GAMEX],” Journal of Interactive Marketing, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 98–115, Aug. 2018, doi: 10.1016/j.intmar.2018.03.002.
[24] M. Schrepp, A. Hinderks, and J. Thomaschewski, “Design and Evaluation of a Short Version of the User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ-S),” International Journal of Interactive Multimedia and Artificial Intelligence, vol. 4, no. 6, pp. 103–108, Dec. 2017, doi: 10.9781/ijimai.2017.09.001.
[25] D. G. Bonett and T. A. Wright, “Sample Size Requirements for Estimating Pearson, Kendall and Spearman Correlations,” Psychometrika, vol. 65, no. 1, pp. 23–28, Mar. 2000, doi: 10.1007/BF02294183.
[26] J. R. Lewis and J. Sauro, “Item Benchmarks for the System Usability Scale,” 2018.
[27] V. Braun and V. Clarke, “Using thematic analysis in psychology,” Qual. Res. Psychol., vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 77–101, Jan. 2006, doi: 10.1191/1478088706qp063oa.
[28] V. Braun and V. Clarke, “One size fits all? What counts as quality practice in (reflexive) thematic analysis?,” Qual. Res. Psychol., vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 328–352, Jul. 2021, doi: 10.1080/14780887.2020.1769238.
[29] V. Braun and V. Clarke, “Toward good practice in thematic analysis: Avoiding common problems and be(com)ing a knowing researcher,” Int. J. Transgend. Health, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 1–6, Jan. 2023, doi: 10.1080/26895269.2022.2129597.
[30] A. J. Nederhof, “Methods of coping with social desirability bias: A review,” Eur. J. Soc. Psychol., vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 263–280, Jul. 1985, doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2420150303.
[31] L. Rodrigues et al., “Gamification suffers from the novelty effect but benefits from the familiarization effect: Findings from a longitudinal study,” International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, vol. 19, no. 1, p. 13, Dec. 2022, doi: 10.1186/s41239-021-00314-6.
[32] W. Oliveira and J. Hamari, “Flow Experience in Gameful Approaches: A Systematic Literature Review, Scientometric Analysis, and Research Agenda,” Int. J. Hum. Comput. Interact., vol. 41, no. 20, pp. 13113–13139, Oct. 2025, doi: 10.1080/10447318.2025.2470279.
[33] A. Marinho, I. I. Bittencourt, D. Dermeval, J. Santos, G. Challco, and M. Reis, “How does the Mechanics of Competition and Collaboration Impact on Student’s Flow Experience in a Gamified Educational Environment? An Experimental Study in Higher Education (under review),” Technology, Knowledge and Learning, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 399–424, Mar. 2025, doi: 10.1007/s10758-024-09796-5.
[34] A. Bangor, P. T. Kortum, and J. T. Miller, “An empirical evaluation of the system usability scale,” Int. J. Hum. Comput. Interact., vol. 24, no. 6, 2008, doi: 10.1080/10447310802205776.
[35] J. Nielsen, “Nielsen Norman Group Usability 101: Introduction to Usability,” Nielsen Norman Group, 2012.