The Brand War: A Gamified AI-Feedback System for Time-Limited EFL Writing
Writing is cognitively demanding and anxiety-provoking for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners, especially under time pressure. This paper presents The Brand War, a web-based gamified writing application combining competitive game mechanics with iterative GPT-4.1-powered formative feedback for undergraduate EFL learners completing a timed narrative writing task. Students role-play as marketing interns competing for a job offer, using review passes to receive AI feedback, attack opponents, or shield their own passes while drafting a 500-word brand story. We conducted an exploratory single-session classroom study with 29 university EFL students in Taiwan to examine engagement patterns, whether iterative AI feedback improved writing performance across revisions, and how AI and human scores related to overall outcomes. Students wrote within 60 minutes, using up to five AI feedback passes before a final human-graded submission. Most (65.5%) used the AI feedback system, and within-student AI scores improved modestly across revisions (M = +3.7, SD = 7.4), with larger gains among students completing more cycles and significantly higher final- versus first-review scores among multi-cycle completers (p = .032). AI-assessed and human final scores showed strong convergent validity (r = 0.722, p < .001), and AI-feedback users scored descriptively, though not significantly, higher than non-users. Students maintained a high mean focus ratio (82.4%), and competitive mechanics were used sparingly, suggesting most prioritized writing over social interference even when available. Findings suggest embedding iterative AI scoring within a competitive game context is feasible and may scaffold writing improvement, with implications for EFL writing pedagogy and AI-mediated gamified learning design.