A Manifesto for More Productive Psychological Games Research

Scientific research on games is justified by its potential impact—from uncovering useful advice to parents and players, guidance on what policies and regulation might be effective, to informing the development of better games, and more. To achieve this impact research ultimately needs to be both trustworthy (the presented results must be verifiable, transparently reached, and accurately described) and informative (the results should answer questions that help us get closer to useful advice, policy guidance, design strategies, etc).

Unfortunately, research on games and in the social sciences more broadly—including, but not limited to, my own field of psychological games research—often lacks one or both qualities.

What this means is that researchers are often left with weak and self-contradicting evidence, maintain vehement disagreements on even seemingly simple questions, and can find themselves going in circles without getting any closer to the truth. This includes high-interest topics such as whether violent video games cause aggression, whether the quantity of play is beneficial or harmful for players, and whether video games are addictive, all of which have no resolution in sight. After the collective investment of tremendous amounts of time and research funding, however, many questions—even seemingly simple ones—lack clear answers. In large part, this continued uncertainty is a result of asking questions that are likely too broad to be answerable without further specification, and using methods that severely limit the interpretation of findings.

Today, psychological games research remains inefficient, and, at worst, incapable of fully answering the key questions that parents, players, and policymakers have about the ever-growing role of video games in daily life.

To resolve debates more effectively, I describe seven practices games research should adopt more widely:

1. Strengthening the theoretical derivation chain.
2. Attending to inter-individual effect size variation.
3. Prioritizing longitudinal, within-person studies.
4. Justifying measurement decisions.
5. Harnessing digital trace data.
6. Controlling individual game features.
7. Adopting open research principles.

Individually, none of these ideas are new. However, my goal is to collate them in a document specific to research on games and to add actionable guidance. The path to widespread adoption of these practices will be a difficult one, but there are reasons to be optimistic. For example, there are numerous examples of how work following these practices can advance our knowledge. Additionally, as our knowledge of the limitations of current research designs, statistical analyses, and structures in the research ecosystem has advanced, our path forward has become clearer.