Why so Serious? Raising Curiosity Towards Cultural Heritage with Playful Games Antonio Origlia 1,2 , Maria Laura Chiacchio 1 , Dario Di Mauro 1 , Francesco Cutugno 1,2 1 University of Naples “Federico II” 2 Inst. of Applied Sciences and Intelligent Systems of CNR antonio.origlia@unina.it, marialaura.chiacchio@gmail.com, dario.dimauro@unina.it, cutugno@unina.it Abstract. Serious games have an important role in supporting access to cultural heritage through storytelling and game mechanics. These games, however, are more suitable for learning environments: in order to stim- ulate people to look for cultural content, other means are necessary. In this paper we present our view on the role playful games may have in eliciting curiosity and how a specific gaming mechanics, customised char- acters building, may change the way technological systems contribute in attracting people to cultural sites. 1 Introduction The term gamification has become very popular in the last years, as digital games are becoming more and more integrated with everyday life. The term indicates the process of adding a layer of mechanics, typically associated with games, to certain tasks in order to make them less imposing. Gamification approaches may also be designed to introduce a rewarding factor to the decision making process, so that people perform the task in a way that the designer considers advantageous, as in the case of points collection in supermarkets. People engaged in gamified tasks have a serious attitude and gamification results in minimally invasive mechanics that are well-integrated with the task at hand. The gamification idea is sometimes abused and may give rise to misunder- standings. Following [14, p. 46], although players “[. . . ] might be motivated for a while by shiny prizes, real engagement requires a much stronger lure. That means a deeper, more interesting system design must be developed”. It is there- fore important to understand that the goal of gamification is not to amuse people but to reduce the negative impact of due tasks. Using games to support learn- ing has proven itself to be effective. Games designed with a main purpose other than pure entertainment are called serious games. Compared to gamified tasks, serious games do not integrate a pre-existing experience and make use of more complex mechanics, thus being completely independent objects. In these games,