GUEST BLOG: Mind the Gap!

Standing on a tube platform yesterday after a few days of back to back meetings with game developers, it dawned on me that people in this industry need to show high levels of caution when thinking about applying methods and strategies to the F2P model that claim to be focused on gamer behaviour. Why? Because it is crucial that developers are critical of whatever is being recommended to them. They must ensure it is robust and, where appropriate, scientific. Any assumptions from a gamer psychological behavioural perspective must be backed by concrete evidence and be reliably tested.

I see lots of articles and assumptions made about the psychology of video games, some of which just don’t seem to me to have good scientific status. I would not go as far as saying the advice is pseudoscientific, but making claims, beliefs or practices that are presented as scientific from a gamer psychology perspective but cannot be backed up with robust valid scientific method is dangerous and, ultimately, can be damaging for business, not to mention compromising the gamer experience.

Whilst there is a gap between the academic scientific findings about gamer psychology and how the industry can utilise this to enhance the gamer experience, any recommendations must be critically evaluated and credible. Psychology is a science and, used well, understanding human behaviour and applying this to the gaming development process can only be a good thing. But this is dependent on it not being used to manipulate, which is just as bad as using assumptions about the psychology of the gamer that are not found on scientific research and calling it psychology.

For example, using popular psychological models such as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and applying it to influencing gamer behaviour would require, because of the nature of the model (i.e. a psychological model of motivation), that you are assuming the model can be used to influence motivation to play and/or address psychological needs at the point in the game where you are trying to change the behaviour.  

If you were using this theory to understand at what point to introduce a particular monetisation tactic you would need to test and retest scientifically to understand whether there are any statistically significant results within that particular point  of the game play. If there were, then you could assume it actually triggers the behaviour you want. It’s far better, however, to utilise models within psychology research that have already been tested scientifically by researchers and applied to video game play and that have already shown statistically significant findings about influencing player behaviour.

Both the F2P model and video game psychology are very new fields and really there are only a few people in the world that specialise in this science who have the proper background and exposure to the game industry and the scientific training to really understand how human behaviour aligned to psychology of video game play works. There are some truly great innovative psychological academic papers available around the F2P model which examines gamers' motivation. One of these is the research that seeks to understand the gamers' perception of value in purchasing in game items, for example, that developers can utilise in their work, (I will cover this off extensively in my talk at the F2P Summit) with the knowledge that the findings are robust and have good reliability and validity.

Working back in the games industry after years of academia training to be a psychologist for me is thrilling as well as stimulating and, frankly, in my humble opinion, the industry has some of the best minds in the world working in it, so I am not trying to teach anyone to suck eggs. However, I do advise that claims of a psychological nature in terms of gamer behaviour should be especially critically evaluated and developers ought to ensure that any suggestions and recommendations about gamer psychology they use in their work are grounded in scientific evidence.

This blog was written by Berni Good who is the founder of Cyberpsychologist Limited (www.cyberpsychologist.com) and who is speaking at F2P Summit on 10 October - www.f2p-summit.com