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.