The interactivity between game experience in ubiquitous medium and creativity

Enjoyment, excitement and challenging during game experience are identified as “non-financial gambling” (Griffiths, 1991). Scanning of fMRI discovers that brain activations during game experience are consistent to other addictive behaviors, for examples, gambling, substance abuse or alcohol (Han, Bolo, Daniels, Arenella, Lyoo, & Renshaw, 2010). Game flow experience measures the engagement level during playing, which predict future participation (Chou & Ting, 2003) and enhance creativity. A covert distinctiveness of a creative person is the openness to any experience to enhance creativity in sake of subjective, organizational or social wellbeing. However, addicted victims sustain in game playing unproductively and thus detach from their social interactions. The objective of this study was to explore the interactivity between game experience and creativity. About 230 adults took part in the study. The significant findings included: a) creativity had a negative prediction to game addiction whereas time distortion, telepresence and explorative showed a positive relationship to game addiction; b) variety of game genres predicted creativity but fun did it negatively; c) explorative game experience positively predicted both game addiction and creativity. These results may imply that developing of a creative personality is a protective factor to game addiction. The purpose of game variety and relevant experience, in a creative person’s perspective, is a learning process to explore novelties in virtual environment to enhance creativity, instead of escaping from anxiety or stress from reality. The key factor is that a creative person is capable to identify between reality and novelty (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996) and digital game playing is a designed experience with rule-governed behaviors. They will become fatigue till familiarity, no matter how funny it is. We also recommend addicted victims to participate in other creative-facilitating activities. These activities help them to immerse in social life with a healthy and positive substitution, which also contributes to re-define a productive value to game playing.