A Review of Game Research Methodologies

The field of game research is still very young. As such, unlike many research fields, it lacks an established or widely accepted set of methods and techniques. Methods are often taken from other fields while new tools tailored specifically to games are still emerging. We used a conceptual content analysis approach to review the methodology of papers published from 2013 to 2018 in four major publication venues related to game research: CHI Play, the Digital Games Research Association conference, the International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, and the Games and Culture journal. We searched the papers to find all occurrences of words or phrases related to methods, tools or participants. The process was iterative as new keywords were found and informed subsequent searches. For instance, the names of specific questionnaires used by game researchers were found while searching for survey. Our findings offer an overview of the methods, tools and recruitment strategies currently used for game research. Through this review, we aim to contribute to the development of a set of well defined and commonly understood methods for game research.