es
Kivikangas et al. present a technical note to showcase how to
ple’s responses to other people, offering rich experimental stimuli
that are not possible in more traditional psychological experi-
ments. Lankes and Bernhaupt are looking at people’s interpretation
of complex social scenarios. This study could have applications for
the definition of avatar behaviours in video games.
Away from studying the players themselves, the papers here
show the opportunities for research in a wide variety of domains.
Schofield (this issue) discusses the possibilities offered by using vi-
As the use of video games as research instruments is relatively
are those of traditional validity in experimental work: construct,
internal and ecological validity. McMahan et al. in particular pro-
vide a lot of advice on the selection of commercially available
games particularly in providing the necessarily control over the
game to provide good internal validity. Staiano and Calvert in look-
ing at exercise games (exergames) as a way to monitor people’s
adherence to exercise regimes concern themselves extensively
with the issues of construct validity: are the measures provide
automatically by exergames accurate indicators of the amount
Entertainment Computing xxx (2011) xxx–xxx
lab
nt
es.deo games as a way of providing evidence in courtrooms. Staianocollect different kinds of data, from physiological responses to
qualitative data from surveys, while using videogames. Lankes
and Bernhaupt (both this issue) look at people’s responses in game
to facial expressions but primarily as a way of investigating peo-
new, there are many pitfalls and challenges faced by a researcher
using them. Many of the papers here are concerned with how best
to use video games in research and give useful advice to other
researchers. It is encouraging to note that the primary concernsEditorial
Introduction to special issue: Video gam
There is no denying the tremendous success of video games.
This makes them fascinating objects of study in their own right.
But in addition, it is clear that the rich variety of worlds they offer,
makes them useful for research purposes as well. This is not a new
idea. They have been used in research at least since the mid 90’s,
when Kirsh and Maglio [1] used Tetris to investigate the difference
in the actions humans perform from a cognitive perspective. How-
ever, it seemed to us that recently games were being used more
and more as new tools with which to carefully study people. For
this reason, we ran a workshop at the ACM CHI 2009 [2] conference
to explore the use of video games as research instruments. The
conclusions reached in the workshop were that: video games moti-
vate participants in a controlled experiment setting, but that there
is a need for caution in the data collection and consideration of eth-
ical issues. Following on from its success, we have brought to-
gether this special issue of Entertainment Computing to represent
the state of the art in using video games to further wider research,
rather than as a domain in themselves. This issue reflects some of
the huge variety of ways in which games can help contribute to
knowledge, as well as the challenges and opportunities that games
offer. For this reason, we decided to accept two types of papers: re-
search reports and technical notes. The former showcase how vi-
deo games, and video game technology, are currently being used
to study phenomena from different disciplines; the latter share
expertise on how to use video games as tools.
The most straightforward applications for video games in re-
search is to study the players and the factors that influence their
experiences. In this issue, McMahan et al. look at the effect of the
naturalness of the interaction on how players performs. They use
Mario Kart Wii as the game but their focus of attention is on com-
parisons between interaction techniques. Downs and Sundar (this
issue) are looking at the psychological phenomena of people asso-
ciating themselves with success and dissociating themselves from
failure, and whether video games provoke similar responses as
those found in social situations.
Contents lists avai
Entertainme
journal homepage: e1875-9521/$ - see front matter  2011 International Federation for Information Process
doi:10.1016/j.entcom.2011.03.011as research instruments
and Calvert (this issue) consider how video games could be used
to encourage and monitor adherence to exercise regimes. Smets
et al. (this issue) are looking at whether it is valid to use a video
game environment to evaluate a navigational aid for use in emer-
gency incidents.
The overall message coming through the papers here is that vi-
deo games are valued for their richness and complexity whilst at
the same time providing an environment that can (at least some-
times) be strictly controlled. This allows researchers to combine
the complexity inherent in real world situations with the need
for repeatable and consistent stimuli for all participants. This can
perhaps be seen in the choice of games used across these papers.
Only two papers used off-the-shelf commercial games: McMa-
han et al. used Mario Kart Wii and Downs and Sundar used AMF
Bowling 2004. These provided real games in which to study gaming
experience and the psychological effects of winning or losing,
respectively. In these contexts, it is clear that using video games
is necessary but even so both papers argue carefully for their
choice of games for these studies.
However, almost all the other papers that undertook specific
studies with games, used game engines to build the game they
needed; the exceptions being Staiano and Calvert, who primarily
review the range of existing exercise games that are available,
and Schofield who programmed what he needed. Game engines
are not games themselves but allow anyone to create games in
the style of existing games. Several engines were used: Unreal,
Hammer, Source SDK and CryENGINE. Here the engines offer the
opportunity to build a rich environment for a scenario which can
then be played out. At the same time, the fact that the environment
is defined entirely within the game context gives the researcher a
high degree of control of the scenario. Whilst this level of control is
vital in some studies, for example, Lankes and Bernhaupt, for Scho-
field using the games to illustrate evidence, it perhaps offers new
problems when some of the details of the scenario are essentially
arbitrary and yet can be picked up on as salient by jurors.
le at ScienceDirect
Computing
elsevier .com/entcoming. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

and quality of the exercise done by the player? Several of the stud-
ies are actually using video games in order to improve the ecolog-
ical validity of the experimental tasks and Smets et al. are
specifically concerned as to whether the video game setting has
sufficient ecological validity that results from the game mean that
real world trials are not necessary.
Judging by the enthusiasm, variety and quality of the papers in
this special issue, using video games in more general research is
likely to become increasingly common. The papers presented here
cover the major questions that other researchers would need to
ask: why use video games, which games, what for and how? Fur-
thermore, with this issue we have aimed to highlight the impor-
tance of a research tool that, even though is widely available,
needs to be framed within a proper methodological and experi-
mental discussion. Thus, we hope to solidify its usage under a clear
scientific perspective, as well as to motivate and even inspire
future users of video games as research instruments.
References
[1] D. Kirsh, P. Maglio, On distinguishing epistemic from pragmatic action,
Cognitive Science 18 (1994) 513–549.
[2] E.H. Calvillo Gámez, P. Cairns, J. Gow, J. Back, E. Capstick, Video games as
research instruments, in: Proceedings of the 28th of the International
Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI
EA ’10, ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2010, pp. 4493–4496.
Eduardo Calvillo-Gámez
Div. Nuevas Tecnologías de la Información,
Universidad Politécnica de San Luis Potosí,
Urbano Villalón 500,
San Luis Potosí, SLP, Mexico
E-mail address: eduardo@gmail.com
Jeremy Gow
Dept. of Computing, Imperial College London,
180 Queen’s Gate,
London SW7 2AZ, UK
E-mail address: jgow@doc.ic.ac.uk
Paul Cairns
Dept. of Computer Science, University of York,
Deramore Lane,
York YO10 5GH, UK
E-mail address: pcairns@cs.york.ac.uk
Available online xxxx
2 Editorial / Entertainment Computing xxx (2011) xxx–xxx