Measuring the experience of digital game enjoyment

The area of digital games constitutes a tremendously varied set of applications, with a wide range of associated player experiences, defying a one-size-fits-all approach to its conceptualization and measurement. One of the main challenges facing the gaming research community is a lack of a coherent and fine-grained set of methods and tools that enable the measurement of entertainment experiences in a sensitive, reliable and valid manner. Much like the six wise (but blind) men touching the elephant, no single methodological perspective can be said to provide a comprehensive understanding of digital gaming. Following this insight, the FUGA project, funded under the EU FP6 NEST ‘Measuring the Impossible ’ initiative, takes a critical view towards the exclusive reliance on any one single indicator for measuring player experience. In the FUGA project, we explicitly strive towards a multi-method, multi-measure approach whereby we anchor and cross-validate various measures (e.g., self-report, psychophysiological, behavioural, neural) via their simultaneous application to a certain standardized set of games, and correlating the results thus obtained. Assessing the basic psychometric properties (sensitivity, reliability, validity) of all measures developed in the project is one of the defining characteristics of FUGA. As a significant first step, we have developed and validated the Game Experience Questionnaire (GEQ), which reliably distinguishes between seven different dimensions of playe