Game Design: Creating Psychological Experiences

Metagame Book Club: Game Studies. "Game Design: Creating Psychological Experiences" by Sherry Jones. Published Nov. 9, 2015. Last Updated: Jan. 19, 2019.

**This page was first published on the Metagame Book Club.

Welcome to the first week of Track 1: Games & Psychology! We begin our study by addressing a rising trend in recent years of game development; that is, applying psychological theories and research to game design. Whether we play games on a casual or hardcore basis, psychological and cognitive research studies show that our thinking and behaviors are impacted by games in varying degrees during, and long after, gameplay is over. The game industry also recognizes that the player’s reception of a game is what determines the game’s commercial success or failure, and has been looking to psychology for answers on how to design games that satisfy the player’s psychological needs and desires.

Since it is in the game developers’ and studios’ interest to compel the target audience to purchase and to continue playing a game, hiring professional psychologists to assess the commercial appeal of a game is now a common practice. “Gaming psychologists” are given the important task for conducting playtests to evaluate the players’ reception of a game, and to provide design suggestions that will make the gaming experience more pleasurable for the players.

As an educator of game design and psychology, I can identify numerous psychological theories that are applicable to game design, too many to be covered in a single week's discussion. Therefore, to provide focus to this week’s study, I will introduce a few, key psychological theories that now drive the design of many successful, commercial games. A combination of open access (OA) academic journal articles, game news articles, and videos, are offered in this week’s reading list, and the following theories are in focus: attention theory and attentional spotlight metaphor; color theory; sound theory; reward theory; flow theory.

Educators, whether or not you plan to apply game-based learning or the gamification method to your classes, the psychological theories covered in Track 1: Games & Psychology can help you reconsider how the design of any curriculum or classroom environment has the potential to influence the students’ ability to learn, to focus, to be motivated, to be engaged, to have agency, and much more. Beyond standard curriculum design, games imprint in players a sense of presence, autonomy, self-determination, and more by providing interactive elements and progressive storytelling. After learning about how games can influence cognitive and physiological development, you may feel compelled to assign games as part of your lessons.

Enjoy the readings! Onward~

-- Sherry Jones (Track 1: Games & Psychology Instructor)