ABSTRACT This study examines how escape room games function within transmedia environments to create gamification ecosystems. Focusing on REALWORLD, a leading South Korean escape room platform, the study analyses its structure and operations through the case study of an outdoor escape room game titled Secret Letter from Jeong-dong. By observing the gameplay, analysing user-created games, and evaluating platform functionalities, it explores how transmedia and participatory mechanisms are integrated into REALWORLD. Users engage by playing, critiquing, and designing games, creating a dynamic gamification ecosystem. This research redefines escape rooms as participatory ecosystems integrating design, storytelling, and creative authorship. Findings suggest REALWORLD’s growth stems from the genre’s adaptability across media and its ability to blur boundaries between media, reality and fiction, and creators and users. This transmedial structure highlights its potential as a sustainable model for future escape room ecosystems.

ABSTRACT This paper develops ‘museum-game engagement framework’ examining representation, interaction, and motivation dimensions to investigate video games’ role in visitor engagement and digital-native audience attractions for museums. The study investigates two cases: the Audioguide Louvre-Nintendo 3DS (AL-3DS), providing virtual Louvre exploration, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACHN), enabling personal virtual museum creations. Through qualitative game content analysis and questionnaires from players, the study examines participants’ game experience and engagement perceptions and each case’s potential to generate real-world museum interest. Findings indicate that both cases effectively represent museum content digitally, facilitate meaningful digital museum interactions, and motivate real-world museum visits through different mechanisms. The AL-3DS enhance users’ understanding of and interest in visiting the Louvre, and ACNH builds confidence and general museum interest through museum creation experiences. Both games successfully connect digital and physical museum spaces, demonstrating video games’ potential as museum engagement tools and providing practical implications for future museum-game collaborations.

ABSTRACT This study evaluated the impact of a promotional strategy for ceramic craftsmanship through social media platforms on the social relationships and well-being of artisanal masters. The participants in the study were ceramic masters from villages and small towns in the Hebei province, China (Intervention Group, n = 107; Control Group, n = 97), as well as residents from the same villages and towns (n = 110). The participants underwent surveys twice, before the intervention and six months after its initiation. They evaluated their monthly income, overall life satisfaction, and the quality of their social relationships. The key findings indicate a significant increase in the income of masters using social networking platforms, along with a notable improvement in overall life satisfaction. Furthermore, the intervention had a positive impact on social communication within the rural community, leading to improvements in relationships, trust, and participation in community life.

ABSTRACT Adoption of AI technologies in the arts has faced a divided reception and raised controversies—while some artists critique them, others embrace the opportunities they provide. In this paper, we contribute empirical insights into what motivates artists’ adoption of AI art technologies, as well as what kind of worldviews these motivations for AI adoption in artistic contexts embody. We shed light on these questions by presenting results from a qualitative interview study (N = 19) of AI artists practicing in Nordic countries. Five key themes emerged that describe artists’ motivations for using AI in their work, which we analyse in reflection with Kerschner and Ehlers' Attitudes Towards Technology (ATT) framework in terms of underlying attitudes of AI-Enthusiasm, Pragmatism, Romanticism, and Scepticism . Our analysis diversifies the understanding of why artists use AI, surfacing cultural and political tensions inherent in adoption of AI technologies for artistic and creative use.

ABSTRACT Contemporary China’s urban development has been driven by a logic of homogenization, quantification, and exchange value—hallmarks of the globally admired ‘Chinese speed.’ Yet this rapid abstraction of urban space has increasingly disconnected from the lived experiences of residents, fostering widespread disillusionment and eroding the public’s confidence in everyday spatial participation. As a result, the city risks losing its capacity for organic renewal. In stark contrast, a group of working poets—migrant labourers engaged in creative self-expression—inhabits the same spaces while producing alternative, poetic forms of everyday life. This article employs Henri Lefebvre’s spatial dialectics to analyse the divergent spatial practices of urban residents and working poets, revealing the roots of their contrasting experiences. Through interdisciplinary inquiry—combining urban theory, field interviews, and audiovisual experimentation—this research culminates in the creation of an essay film that constructs a representational image-space based on the working poets’ practices. By doing so, it proposes a narrative intervention that not only critiques dominant spatial discourses but also invites publics to reclaim everyday space through creative, poetic acts. Ultimately, the article positions artmaking as a method of urban problem-solving—foregrounding difference, imagination, and self-identification as vital tools for reactivating the right to the city.

ABSTRACT This study explores the design of digital escape rooms for medical education, aiming to engage tech-savvy learners. We adapted the escape room format–a team-based challenge requiring puzzle-solving under time pressure–to address essential medical training needs, leveraging its inherent pressure and collaborative problem-solving to develop skills alongside knowledge. Our design process integrated narrative elements, immersive challenges, and virtual patient encounters, aligning puzzles with Bloom's Taxonomy and incorporating basic medical science with clinical scenarios. We integrated available web-based tools, learner analytics, virtual patient platforms, and Large Language Models to generate customized tasks, fostering active engagement and holistic competency development. Throughout, we emphasized iterative design, incorporating stakeholder feedback to refine the experience. By showcasing the challenges and successes of blending diverse digital tools into a cohesive learning environment, the write-up provides a practical blueprint for future educators seeking to create innovative and immersive digital learning experiences.

ABSTRACT This study investigates the potential of using Linkography, a method traditionally applied to evaluate creativity in design collaboration, to evaluate participants’ sense of immersion in virtual reality (VR) animation. Given the lack of prior research applying Linkography to VR environments, we replicated the methodology of Nielsen et al. (2016. “Missing the Point: An Exploration of How to Guide Users’ Attention During Cinematic Virtual Reality.” In Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Virtual Reality Software and Technology, 229–232), which evaluated the effectiveness of three visual guidance methods in VR animations. Similarly, in our experiment, participants watched animations with the same three types of visual guidance and completed both questionnaires and Linkography diagrams to capture their responses. In this experiment, we used the Visual Guidance in VR (VGVR) questionnaire, which was designed to measure both immersion and the effectiveness of visual guidance, incorporating items from the Slater-Usoh-Steed (SUS) model and the Aesthetic Experience Questionnaire (AEQ). Finally, we compared the VGVR questionnaire scores and Linkography entropy values from our experiment with those from Nielsen's study. The study demonstrated that Linkography can be a viable tool for assessing immersion in VR experiences, particularly when combined with traditional questionnaires. Additionally, the results showed that different visual guidance methods impacted participants’ immersion, with the Object (firefly) to Follow guidance yielding the highest scores.

ABSTRACT This study examines the design and impact of educational escape rooms (EERs) in enhancing master’s students’ academic performance at an online university. EERs utilise environmental elements for problem-solving, recently adapting to promote critical thinking, collaboration, and social responsibility. Although initially embraced, concerns about their educational value persist. Using a quantitative approach, this study evaluates an online escape room's effect on the final grades of 3,175 master’s students, revealing that participants achieved significantly higher grades. Additionally, it highlights the teacher’s role in designing effective experiences that balance game mechanics and narrative content. The creative process in EER development indicates that well-crafted escape rooms can be sustainable and applicable across various disciplines and contexts.

ABSTRACT Digital creativity represents human creativity generated with the assistance of digital technology. It significantly aids individuals in navigating the complexities of the modern world, particularly in new jobs that require digital proficiency. Therefore, research is imperative to enhance digital creativity by utilizing scoping review and COM-B system to identify and classify its driving factors. This study reviewed 10 research articles sourced from eight databases, which underwent a screening process to ensure adherence to a pre-defined set of inclusion and exclusion criteria. Through this process, this study identified 18 factors capable of fostering digital creativity across individual, group, and organizational levels. These factors were then classified within the COM-B framework, with each factor assigned to the appropriate domain: Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation. These findings provide a foundation for academics and practitioners to design intervention programmes. Furthermore, this study provides resources for guiding future research and continued exploration in this field.

ABSTRACT This article explores speculative storytelling as a participatory method for digital placemaking, drawing on the Future Huyton project in the UK. Combining creative workshops with augmented reality (AR) and transmedia design, the project invited local residents to imagine alternative futures for their town, using narrative as a low-threshold, culturally resonant medium for civic engagement. The study examines how participants’ lived experiences and aspirations were expressed through fictional stories that contributed to a collective reimagining of place. Emphasizing the role of storytelling as both a creative and reflective tool, the project highlights how communities can engage with digital placemaking beyond consultation, through processes grounded in local identity and vision. Through this lens, the article contributes to emerging debates on participatory design, co-creation, and the integration of narrative methods in community-led urban innovation.