Abstract
A growing collection of game based educational tools work to improve player resilience to misinformation and disinformation. The threat of such misleading information continues to threaten the foundation on which a myriad of high-impact decisions are made. This research aims to understand how to optimize the design of such game-based interventions. By conducting an analysis through the lens of two behavior change theories, the work to seeks to identify game characteristics for successful interventions in this domain.
Using excitation and transportation theory, the work observes and recommends characteristics to improve efficacy for existing and future playable media in this behavior change domain. The conclusion is that an optimal theory informed game, may expose players to small doses of misleading information, elicit a negative emotional response to its appearance or a positive emotional response to its detection and align player empathies against creators and spreaders of misleading information.