Lessons learned about the development of digital entertainment tools for experiments on resources distribution

• Published in: Computers in human behavior 2017-05, Vol.70, p.523-534
• Main Authors: Martins, Samuel Luna, Cabral, Guilherme Ribeiro Eulalio, Junior, Luiz Delando Santos Moreira, Martins, Erick Haendel Costa Fontes, Cabral, Giordano Ribeiro Eulalio
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Behavior; Cognitive psychology; Computer & video games; Decision making; Entertainment; Experimentation; Human behavior; Online entertainment; Research instruments; Resources distribution; Selfishness; Studies; Video games
• ISSN: 0747-5632; 1873-7692
• DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2017.01.023

Resource Distribution is a topic from the field of distributive judgement, generally studied by cognitive psychology researchers, which make use of economic experiments to investigate aspects of the evolution of cooperation, altruism and selfishness in humanity. Researchers commonly set experiments to observe human behavior, seeking to increase the degree of engagement of the participants, in order to improve the quality and the amount of results. Digital entertainment artifacts, such as video games, are then used as a viable way of bringing such a high level of engagement. However, psychology researchers usually do not have the knowledge needed to develop digital applications. In addition, as far as we know, no scientific work have tried to describe the impact of using digital entertainment tools in experiments on decision making for resource division. This work aims to report a compilation of discoveries and knowledge learned when designing digital entertainment tools, tailored for scientific experiments on Resources Distribution. The task included interviews with specialists, a questionnaire sent to researchers, the conduction of ideation techniques to generate new concepts and, finally, a set of tools were prototyped and a subset was ultimately developed. Results were collected and six main lessons we learned are reported. We hope these lessons learned to be helpful to guide others researchers to conceive and develop their own digital entertainment tools for scientific experimentation. •Games are presented as tools to researches on resources distribution.•Lessons learned during exploration, ideation, prototyping and development are listed.•Recommendations are presented, especially for academic teams.•Examples illustrate the translation of dilemmas into children oriented games.