TY  - GEN
N1  - This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International
4.0 License.
ID  - discovery10161500
AV  - public
N2  - Video games have been used as tools for non-entertainment purposes, including research contexts. This paper defines academic games' as games that are used and developed within academic institutions for the generation, evaluation, or dissemination of knowledge. Broad intentions related to this unique use of games are rarely explicitly discussed. When they are mentioned, they tend to be specific to an individual game's implementation, or the field of study in which it is situated. This article maps the different fundamental purposes that motivate the use of games in research contexts: involvement as stimulus, intervention, incentive, or as modeling platform. A compact review of existing literature is provided, complemented by a discussion of different facets shaping the use of games in research contexts: the flow of information, the dependency between academic effort and game artifact, and the specificity that is required. This discussion is informed by the analysis of various example games from previous work. A research agenda for the future professionalization of academic game development and its discourse concludes the article.
CY  - Athens, Greece
PB  - Association for Computing Machinery
Y1  - 2022/09/05/
A1  - Gómez-Maureira, MA
A1  - Van Duijn, M
A1  - Rieffe, C
A1  - Plaat, A
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1145/3555858.3555926
TI  - Academic Games - Mapping the Use of Video Games in Research Contexts
KW  - academic games
KW  -  serious games
KW  -  applied games
KW  -  research games
KW  - 
games for non-entertainment purposes
KW  -  game development
ER  -