Empirical Game Research

Game research has emerged over the past decade as a young but vigorous academic research field. While the field has its origins in cultural studies, recent trends are emphasising the development of empirical methodologies, and the focus is moving from analytical approaches to issues such as the relationships between gameplay and narrative (e.g. Aarseth, 1997, Juul, 2001) to an increasing emphasis on empirical methods and scientific studies of gameplay and its affects upon players. While much of this empirical work has been based upon questionnaires testing player self-evaluations over multiple gameplay sessions (e.g. Yee, 2006), psychophysiological and neuroscientific methods are emerging for studying emotional factors of gameplay (Ravaja et al, 2008), detailed activation of neurophysiologic areas (Mathiak et al, 2006) and the orchestration of visual attentional processes in cognitive task performance in gameplay (Lindley and Sennersten, 2007) at a level of fine detail (e.g. milliseconds) within play sessions. These more detailed methods are laying the foundations for a much deeper understanding of the cognitive skill learning outcomes of gameplay.