**8. Results and discussion**

In this section, an examination of the key finding that emerged through the systematic review of the participant observations and supporting feedback will be offered. These findings largely align with considerations outlined in Section 6.1 and coalesce around the following headings: challenge, creativity, completion and alignment. A reflection on methodological appropriateness and application is also offered.

#### **8.1 Challenge**

As discussed in Section 4, the pleasure elicited through the challenge of engaging with a game or gamified system such as TNAR is perceived to have significant bearing on the ability of that game to motivate participants to continue to engage. Observations of those using the TNAR application support that thesis, but possibly the motivation was less pleasurable than per the model. Five of the seven participants presented verbal or physical signs of frustration when engaging with the text-based game, with comments, such as 'How am I supposed to know the right answer?', 'Oh no, I have to start again!' and 'Oh this is ridiculous!' as representative examples of the range of emotional responses observed. Whilst some of the observed frustration was directed specifically towards the system and interface, with technical issues and unfamiliarity with modes of engaging with AR accounting for this, four of seven participants, including the expert users, were observed to be demotivated by the textbased game mechanism specifically. Comments indicated that this is related to two factors: degree of difficulty caused too many failures and repetitions, and this was insufficiently mitigated by the motivational boosts of perceived incremental progressions and rewards. Secondly, failure and repetition—exploring different avenues in order to progress—is a tried and tested mechanism in text-based games, but failure and the need to repeat in the context of an educational game in a stately home were received extremely negatively, indicating a misalignment between expected mode of play and what was offered.
