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Psychological Game Design

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Computer Graphics and Games

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Synonyms

Psychology in Game Design

Definition

Psychological game design is the use of psychological principles in game design to enhance player experience and engagement.

Introduction

Research on psychological aspects of digital games has been rising within the last decade. Game companies also started to hire psychologists to conduct research and implement psychological principles in their game designs. In this article, major psychological theories that are applied to game design are briefly introduced.

Operant Theory

Operant theory (Skinner 1953) mainly suggests that rewards motivate desired behaviors, and the frequency of a behavior depends on the schedule of the rewards. Rewards might be provided after a fixed number of behaviors (i.e., fixed ratio) or after a variable number of behaviors with an average ratio (i.e., variable ratio). Similarly, reward schedules might also be based on time intervals rather than the number of behaviors (interval schedules). In general, ratio...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, METU, Ankara, Turkey

    Ahmet Uysal

  2. Department of Information Systems, METU, Ankara, Turkey

    Mehmet Kosa

Authors
  1. Ahmet Uysal
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  2. Mehmet Kosa
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ahmet Uysal .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Newton Lee Laboratories, LLC, Tujunga, California, USA

    Newton Lee

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Uysal, A., Kosa, M. (2018). Psychological Game Design. In: Lee, N. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computer Graphics and Games. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08234-9_134-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08234-9_134-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-08234-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-08234-9

  • eBook Packages: Living Reference Computer SciencesReference Module Computer Science and Engineering

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