**8.3 Completion**

The pleasure offered by completion—that lasting sense of achievement and satisfaction when a challenge is overcome successfully—was not a significant feature in the players observed as only one of the seven participants completed the game. The creative scene decorating component of the game was open-ended with no clear point of completion. The text-based game did have a definite completion point, but this proved too challenging for the majority of the participants to achieve. Participants were observed to become demotivated and disengaged. What is of note is the length of time players were willing to commit to persevering in the text-based game; a matter of 5–10 minutes in most cases before giving up. This engagement time was significantly less than expected during design and testing, and again suggests differing expectations set by the context of the experience. Would the players have been prepared to commit more time to play the game in a setting such as their own front room for example? Is attention span necessarily short in an environment that offers so much to engage with in a limited timeframe? There was of course one exception; one super-participant navigated the text-based game with fluency and enthusiasm. In this case, the challenge level was appropriate and completion—a sense of achievement was experienced.
