Gamifying Sociological Surveys Through Serious Games—A Data Analysis Approach Applied to Multiple-Choice Question Responses Datasets
Abstract
:1. Introduction
- Functional Tasks Integration (Platform Layer):
- Process Coordination (Engine Layer):
- Endpoint Provision (Game Layer):
- Separation of Concerns (Application Layer):
2. Related Works
2.1. Brief Literature Review
2.2. Questions Presented During Gameplay
- Democratic Radicalism: Seeks societal transformation through democratic means.
- Critical Liberalism: Emphasizes social justice and critiques traditional liberal thought.
- Depoliticization: Removes issues from the public sphere; exclusive to experts or elites.
- Conservatism: Emphasizes tradition, order, and stability.
- Authoritarianism: Strict control suppresses dissent in government.
- Nihilism: Rejects accepted aspects of human existence (knowledge, morality, etc.) represented by the Greek slang word “kava”.
- Realism: Emphasizes power, national interest, and balance of power in international politics.
- Technocracy: Advocates rule by experts, particularly scientists and engineers.
- Cultural Reductionism: Believes cultural differences can be explained by a single factor, like race, ethnicity, or religion.
- Humanism: Emphasizes human reason, freedom, and dignity in philosophy and ethics.
- Meritocracy: Rewards based on ability and effort, not social class or background.
- Communalism: A political and economic system based on cooperation, mutual aid, and shared resource ownership.
2.3. Research Questions
- How can modular middleware architectures improve the performance of serious games?
- Existing middleware often introduces computational overhead, affecting rendering and simulations. We address this by decoupling front-end rendering from game logic and by implementing a lightweight scene transition mechanism to enhance performance with minimal memory usage.
- Our research considers how cloud gaming and AI-powered engines may further improve middleware efficiency, proposing a contribution in the form of a modular, lightweight design for better integration.
- In what ways can serious games be optimized to collect behavioral data in real-time without compromising system performance or user privacy?
- Traditional middleware is not tailored for real-time analytics. Our approach integrates real-time event tracking and cloud-based storage using Firebase, ensuring both scalability and minimal performance impact.
- The contribution lies in enabling secure and ethical behavioral data collection while preserving player anonymity.
- How can game middleware be designed for seamless cross-platform compatibility?
- Many middleware systems fail to support efficient deployment across platforms like PC, mobile, WebGL, and VR. We address this by separating front-end and back-end processes, allowing easy adaptation.
- This work contributes a platform-agnostic middleware design, suitable for integration with multiple game engines and deployment environments.
3. Methodology
3.1. Game Resources Used and Challenges
3.1.1. DB Tables
- Create Table Function: This function is designed to create a table with a specific structure to store players’ answers if it does not already exist. It ensures that the database is appropriately configured to store the required information.
- Insert Into Function: The second function involves executing insert commands to add new rows to one of the two tables based on the player’s quests. This function is responsible for populating the database with relevant data corresponding to the player’s actions and choices during gameplay.
3.1.2. Software Specifications (Serious Game Engine Explained)
3.1.3. Technical Challenges and Solutions
3.2. Algorithms and Rationale of E-Polis Digital Game
3.2.1. Scene Transition Mechanism
3.2.2. Initial Algorithm for Scene Transition Using Prefab Collisions
- Core principle:
- ○
- Detects when a player enters a specific area.
- ○
- Presents a dilemma (question) that the player must respond to.
- ○
- Records the player’s choice and adjusts game world variables.
- Purpose of implementation:
- ○
- Used to trigger dilemmas based on player movement to a prefix game world space (road).
- ○
- Ensures game progression only occurs when questions are answered.
- ○
- Enables real-time interaction with the game environment variables.
- How the system works:
- ○
- When a player enters a prefab area, the algorithm activates a pop-up containing a question (dilemma).
- ○
- Player selection updates the game world variables and stores their response for analysis.
- ○
- The dilemma does not disappear when answered; the player is moved outside of the trigger area to see the results of his/her choice and can re-enter and re-answer.
- Pseudocode Presentation:
def on_player_enter_area(player, prefab_area): if player.position in prefab_area: dilemma = get_dilemma(prefab_area) display_dilemma(dilemma) response = player.respond_to_dilemma() store_response(player.id, dilemma.id, response) update_scene_state(dilemma, response) |
- Core principle:
- ○
- Implements real-time changes to game graphics based on player decisions.
- ○
- Unlike the previous approach, pre-rendered objects are modified dynamically.
- Purpose of implementation:
- ○
- Enhances the visual part of our game by allowing players to construct the city’s layout based on their responses.
- ○
- Avoids the limitations of prefabs by using modular rendering techniques.
- How the system works:
- ○
- Each building starts as a disabled object.
- ○
- If the player selects a response, the algorithm modifies the object properties (e.g., texture, shape).
- ○
- It ensures a persistent world transformation, where choices have consequences for the outcome of the city blueprint and design.
- Pseudocode Presentation:
def update_scene(player_choice): for object in scene_objects: if is_affected_by_choice(object, player_choice): modify_object_properties(object, player_choice) render_updated_scene() |
3.2.3. Player Decision Processing Algorithm
- Core principle:
- ○
- Collects and logs player responses in a structured format (but as unstructured data).
- ○
- Ensures consistency and integrity in response collection (definitions of wrong execution and try-catch blocks for failures and errors during db communication or server authentication).
- Purpose of implementation:
- ○
- Supports sociological and political research by mapping player choices to categories.
- ○
- Enables researchers to analyze trends and decision patterns.
- How the system works:
- ○
- Each player’s response was initially stored in a structured CSV file and then expanded through this operation and stored in a remote DB repository in Brussels (Firebase).
- ○
- Metadata such as time taken to answer, player position, and scene details are recorded.
- ○
- These data points can later be processed using statistical clustering and machine learning models.
- Pseudocode Presentation:
def log_player_decision(player_id, dilemma_id, response): timestamp = get_current_time() log_entry = f”{player_id},{dilemma_id},{response},{timestamp}” write_to_RemoteDB(“player_responses.Db”, log_entry) |
3.2.4. Distributed Player State Synchronization Algorithm
- Core principle:
- ○
- Synchronizes game state across multiple players in real-time.
- ○
- Uses Firebase cloud storage to ensure consistency in game state.
- Purpose of implementation:
- ○
- Allows multiple players to influence the same city without inconsistencies.
- ○
- Prevents data loss by storing results remotely.
- How the system works:
- ○
- Player actions and choices are broadcast to Firebase.
- ○
- Other players receive live updates reflecting new game conditions (changes in city structure).
- ○
- Ensures that all participants experience the same urban transformation process.
- Pseudocode Presentation:
def sync_state_to_cloud(player_id, game_state): firebase.update(f”game_states/{player_id}”, game_state) def retrieve_state_from_cloud(player_id): return firebase.get(f”game_states/{player_id}”) |
3.2.5. Endgame Consensus-Based Voting Algorithm
- Core principle:
- ○
- Aggregates player votes on the final city structure.
- ○
- Uses a weighted ranking system to determine overall satisfaction.
- Purpose of implementation:
- ○
- Allows players to reflect on the collective decisions made during gameplay(single player = 1 player or else multiplayer 2 to 6 players per room).
- ○
- Provides researchers with insights into public preferences regarding urban planning.
- How the system works:
- ○
- Each player submits a final vote (like, dislike, neutral).
- ○
- Votes are aggregated and stored in Firebase.
- ○
- The final consensus rating is not displayed in the endgame summary so as not to affect the players’ decisions and perception of the final structure of the city.
- Pseudocode Presentation:
def calculate_final_votes(votes): total_votes = len(votes) positive = sum(1 for v in votes if v == “like”) negative = sum(1 for v in votes if v == “dislike”) other = sum(1 for v in votes if v == “other”) consensus_score = [positive,negative,other] return consensus_score |
3.2.6. Game Workflow Algorithm
- Core principle:
- ○
- Ensures player interactions and decisions are stored in real-time.
- ○
- Maintenance of an accurate record of each player’s responses and voting preferences.
- ○
- Game state updates from building structures to scene transition to the final voting view from the above view.
- Purpose of implementation:
- ○
- To log and store players’ responses to dilemmas.
- ○
- To track the game’s progress and maintain session consistency.
- ○
- To preserve final voting results and the evolving city structure for later evaluation and analysis.
- ○
- To ensure data integrity and persistence remote database repository, preventing data loss.
- How the system works:
- ○
- The player submits an answer to an in-game dilemma.
- ○
- The system captures key metadata:
- ▪
- Player ID (Unique identifier).
- ▪
- Dilemma ID (Question being answered).
- ▪
- Selected Answer (Choice made by the player).
- ▪
- Timestamp (When the decision was recorded).
- ▪
- Game Room (The session the player is part of).
- ○
- The system constructs a database entry with this information.
- ○
- The data are stored in Firebase (a cloud-based game).
- ○
- If necessary, the system updates the game state based on the recorded response.
4. Results
4.1. Step 1: Import Python Library Components
- Pandas: Used for data handling and manipulation of data frames (tabular data structures) for ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) operations on the provided .csv files containing questions and quests (Pandas. Pandas Documentation 2025. Available online: https://pandas.pydata.org/ (accessed on 19 May 2025)).
- SQLite3: Employed to define the database library (SQLite) for database interactions. This includes creating tables and performing CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations (Python Software Foundation. SQLite3 Documentation. Python Software Foundation 2025. Available online: https://docs.python.org/3/library/sqlite3.html (accessed on 19 May 2025)).
- NumPy: Utilized for mathematical calculations and data analysis, providing functionality for defining and performing operations with arrays and matrices. It plays a crucial role in conducting mathematical operations on our game data (NumPy. 2025. Available online: https://numpy.org/ (accessed on 19 May 2025)).
- Matplotlib: Used to create plots and charts representing players’ answers. Matplotlib is a versatile plotting library that supports a wide range of visualization types (Matplotlib. 2025. Available online: https://matplotlib.org/ (accessed on 19 May 2025)).
- Plotly Express: Similar to Matplotlib, Plotly Express extends our visualization capabilities, offering an extensive set of creative and interactive visualizations, especially for scatter plots. It provides additional features like annotations and legends on figures (Plotly Express. 2025. Available online: https://plotly.com/python/plotly-express/ (accessed on 19 May 2025)).
- Warnings: We employed “warnings.simplefilter(action = ‘ignore’, category = FutureWarning)” to suppress warnings during the execution of the Jupyter Notebook produced by Alexandros Gazis, Agrinio, Greece, Python version 3.6.8, virtualenv 20.13.0, This ensures a smoother execution flow and helps in handling errors and messages more efficiently (Python Software Foundation. Python Warnings. 2025. Available online: https://docs.python.org/3/library/warnings.html (accessed on 19 May 2025)).
- Time: Used to generate timestamps from the local work machine’s execution time. Timestamps are incorporated into the generated output files of our tests, providing a temporal reference for analysis (Python Software Foundation. Python Time. Time command 2025. Available online: https://docs.python.org/3/library/time.html (accessed on 19 May 2025)).
4.2. Step 2: Parse the Csv, Analyze Data, Create Db Tables
- create_table function accepts a data frame, selects specific rows and columns, and uses an existing DataFrame to perform the selection. Subsequently, it employs the iloc method to extract the chosen rows and columns from the original DataFrame, resetting the index of the new DataFrame to start from zero.
- create_table_diag function rearranges data into a diagonal pattern to generate a new DataFrame. While similar to create_table, this function creates a distinct data structure. It assembles a new DataFrame from an existing one by organizing the data diagonally. To achieve this, the function calculates the dimensions of the original DataFrame (N, M), forms a list of column names for the new DataFrame (including original column names and diagonal column names), and populates the table with zero values except for the diagonal entries.
- create_db function takes two DataFrames and stores them in an SQLite database with two tables. Initially, it establishes a connection to the SQLite database. Subsequently, it utilizes the to_sql method to save the two DataFrames to the database.
4.2.1. Example of the Actual Dataset with Player’s Dilemmas
4.2.2. Example of the Actual Dataset with Player’s Dilemmas in a Diagonal Pattern
4.3. Step 3: Analyzing Data and Exporting DB Data
4.4. Step 4: Visualizing Responder’s Data
4.5. Step 5: Validate the Ground Truth of Our Results: PCA Analysis
5. Discussion
5.1. Data Analysis
5.2. Limitations
5.2.1. Game Middleware—Large-Scale Architectural Design
5.2.2. Game Middleware—Adaptive Architectural Design Principles
5.2.3. Game Middleware—Traditional Synchronous Client–Server Communication
5.2.4. IoT and Game Middleware—Security and Service Management in IoT SOA Middleware
- It extends a SOA-based communication layer by treating players and their interactions as (real-time) data streams, similar to sensor networks.
- Instead of traditional client–server connections, it ensures event-driven synchronization between game instances, dynamically managing service requests and state transitions without requiring continuous polling.
- It introduces a smart scene transition mechanism that ensures data are securely transmitted and validated before affecting game state changes, thus preventing unauthorized client manipulations.
6. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
Appendix A
Game Workflow Pseudocode Presentation
import time import firebase_admin from firebase_admin import credentials, db # Firebase Authentication Setup def initialize_firebase(): “““Initializes Firebase connection using service account credentials. Ensures secure authentication and access to the database. “““ cred = credentials.Certificate(“path/to/serviceAccountKey.json”) firebase_admin.initialize_app(cred, { ‘databaseURL’: ‘https://our-database-name.firebaseio.com/’ }) print(“Firebase initialized successfully.”) # Function to get current timestamp def get_current_timestamp(): “““Returns the current timestamp in a standard format.”““ return time.strftime(‘%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S’) # Store player response in Firebase def store_player_answer(player_id, dilemma_id, selected_answer, game_room, auth_token): “““Stores the player’s response securely in Firebase (param player_id: Unique identifier for the player, param dilemma_id: Unique identifier for the dilemma question, param selected_answer: The player’s chosen response, param game_room: The game session the player is part of, param auth_token: Authentication token for verifying user access.”““ timestamp = get_current_timestamp() # Authenticate user session if not authenticate_player(player_id, auth_token): print(f”Authentication failed for Player {player_id}. Data not stored.”) return # Reference to Firebase game room answers ref = db.reference(f’game_rooms/{game_room}/player_answers’) ref.push({ ‘player_id’: player_id, ‘dilemma_id’: dilemma_id, ‘answer’: selected_answer, ‘timestamp’: timestamp }) print(f”Stored response for Player {player_id} in Room {game_room}”) # Firebase Authentication Function def authenticate_player(player_id, auth_token): “““Validates the player’s authentication token before storing data (where, param player_id: Unique identifier for the player, param auth_token: Token issued for verifying player authentication, return: Boolean indicating whether authentication was successful.”““ auth_ref = db.reference(f’authenticated_users/{player_id}’) stored_token = auth_ref.get() if stored_token == auth_token: return True else: return False # Initialize Firebase Connection initialize_firebase() # Example Usage store_player_answer(player_id=12, dilemma_id=5, selected_answer=“Option A”, game_room=2, auth_token=“valid_token_123”) store_player_answer(player_id=15, dilemma_id=7, selected_answer=“Option C”, game_room=3, auth_token=“invalid_token_456”) |
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Gazis, A.; Katsiri, E. Gamifying Sociological Surveys Through Serious Games—A Data Analysis Approach Applied to Multiple-Choice Question Responses Datasets. Computers 2025, 14, 224. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers14060224
Gazis A, Katsiri E. Gamifying Sociological Surveys Through Serious Games—A Data Analysis Approach Applied to Multiple-Choice Question Responses Datasets. Computers. 2025; 14(6):224. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers14060224
Chicago/Turabian StyleGazis, Alexandros, and Eleftheria Katsiri. 2025. "Gamifying Sociological Surveys Through Serious Games—A Data Analysis Approach Applied to Multiple-Choice Question Responses Datasets" Computers 14, no. 6: 224. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers14060224
APA StyleGazis, A., & Katsiri, E. (2025). Gamifying Sociological Surveys Through Serious Games—A Data Analysis Approach Applied to Multiple-Choice Question Responses Datasets. Computers, 14(6), 224. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers14060224