LIST TIME! Below is a list of 50+ academics on Twitter who study or write about the overlap between video games and fields like psychology, communications, sociology, law, and more. The list was mostly generated by readers like you so. This is awesome, but it also means no guarantees about how much these people tweet, but I know that I found at least a few new sites and accounts to follow.
Thanks to everyone who contributed! If you have one to add, leave it in the comments.
- Alix, Florent: Game mechanics in interaction design and service design
Website | Twitter - Aranzaes, Hugo: Video Game Psychology
Website | Twitter - Bailenson, Jeremy: Virtual worlds, virtual reality
Website | Twitter - Banks, Jamie: Virtual worlds, user-technology relationship
Website | Twitter - Barr, Matthew: Video games & learning, research developer and games studies lecturer
Website | Twitter - Bogost, Ian: Game designer
Website | Twitter - Boudreau, Kelly: Avatar/player hybridity, player culture, social media games
Website | Twitter - Bowman, Nick: Communications, interactive media
Website | Twitter - Bushman, Brad: Violence in video games
Website | Twitter - Cardona, Josué: Geek culture, health, counseling and eduction
Website | Twitter - Cardona-Rivera, Rogelio: AI, cognitive psychology, narrative
Website | Twitter - Chapman, Adam: Historical video games and the video game as a historical form.
Website | Twitter - Chen, Mark: Ethnography of games, Leet Noobs author
Website | Twitter - Consalvo, Mia: Games studies, cheating
Website | Twitter - Dickinson, Ted: Advertising in gaming
Twitter - Dill-Shackleford, Karen: Media psychologist, Editor of the Oxford Handbook of Media Psychology
Twitter - Eden, Allison: Media psychology and entertainment research
Twitter - Ferguson, Christopher: Aggression, methods, meta analysis, children
Website | Twitter - Fox, Jesse: Virtual environments (especially health, pro-environmental), avatars, agents, representations of sex, gender, and sexuality in games
Website | Twitter - Fritsch, Melanie: Video Games music, virtual worlds research
Website | Twitter - Good, Berni: Video Game Psychologist
Website | Twitter - Griffiths, Mark: Gambling, video game addiction
Website | Twitter - Heron, Michael: Accessibility and video games and text games
Website | Twitter - Hilgard, Joseph : Preferences, addiction, violence, effects of game mechanics, statistics
Website | Twitter - Huskey, Richard: Media Neuroscience, neural correlates of flow, evolutionary motivations for gameplay
Website | Twitter - Ivory, James: Game content, game structure, game effects
Website | Twitter - Jansz, Jeroen: Communications, media
Website | Twitter - Jones, Sherry: Philosophy and rhetoric in games, games based learning
Website | Twitter - Kowert, Rachel: Stereotypes of gamers, game involvement and social competence
Website | Twitter - Kuniak, Steve: Geek/gamer culture
Website | Twitter - Lastowka, Greg: Virtual World, intellectual property, and Internet law
Website | Twitter - Lewis Evans, Ben: Human factors psychologist, gamer, researcher, teacher, presenter
Website | Twitter - Lin, Jeffrey: Player behaviors in League of Legends
Twitter - Madigan, Jamie: Psychology and video games
Website | Twitter - McGonigal, Jane: Positive psychology, education, game design
Website | Twitter - McReady, David: Writer, blogger, podcaster
Website | Twitter - Media Neuroscience Lab: Narratives & morality, interactive narratives & violence, persuasion neuroscience
Website | Twitter - Monu, Kafui: Research Associate, Use of games in business and organizations, gameful design, system analysis
Website | Twitter - O’Connor, Patrick: Psychology, comics, and mental health
Website | Twitter - Ortiz de Gortari, Angelica: Game transfer phenomenon
Website | Twitter - Przybylski, Andrew: Motivation, psychology, games, Internet, self-regulation, psychosocial functioning
Website | Twitter - Ralph, Paul: Design theory, gameful design, gamification
Website | Twitter - Ross, Travis: Motivation, media design, cognitive psychology
Website | Twitter - Schnell, Jessee: Game design
Website | Twitter - Sicart, Miguel: Ethics in video games
Website | Twitter - Spiel, Katharina: Accessibility and adaptiveness in video games and text games
Twitter - Stigell, Louise: Video game psychology and gamification
Website | Twitter - Sutherland, John: Editor in Chief of the Computer Games Journal
Website | Twitter - Togelius, Julian: AI in games, procedural content generation, player modeling
Website | Twitter - Video Game Research: research of all kinds related to video games
Website | Twitter - Vorderer, Peter: Game enjoyment, interactivity, media
Website | Twitter - Wearn, Nia: LudoLiteracy, teaching games design, adapting industry models & production methodologies to work in an educational setting
Website | Twitter - Weststar, Johanna: Working conditions, quality of life, citizenship at work, sustainability
Website | Twitter - White, Lauren: Cognitive psychology, learning in games, cognitive benefits from gaming Website | Twitter
- Yee, Nick: Virtual Worlds
Website | Twitter - Yen Tang, Wai: Blogger, grad student (communication & psychology)
Website | Twitter - Young, Bryan-Mitchell: Ethnography of LAN parties, performances of gender and race
Website | Twitter
Again, if you know of someone who should be on this list but isn’t, leave a comment below.
Dear Jamie,
My name is Leonardo Marengo, I am a student of the BA in Psychology (National University of Córdoba, Argentina), and researcher at the Laboratory of Psychology (Faculty of Psychology, National University of Cordoba, Argentina). Also, I integrate the management team of Project Neumann – Neuro Games, a project that placed third (over 600 projects) in an internal competition of E3 2013, held in Los Angeles (California, USA). Furthermore, my research focuses on evaluating the use of cognitive training games for children, adolescents and adults. I would be on the list! I do not have Twitter, but a Facebook profile (https://www.facebook.com/lmarengo66), which regularly share press releases related to cognitive research in video games. Additionally, I share the website of Neuro Games: http://www.neuro-games.com/.
Best regards,
Leonardo Marengo
Leonardo,
Soy una alumna universitaria del nivel posgrado en los EEUU. En mi facultad, estamos trabajando con un profesor para disenar y distribuir juegos para entrenar analistas de inteligencia (hemos participado en un proyecto de IARPA que se llama SIRIUS). Trabajamos mucho con la psicologia cognitiva y lo que se llaman cognitive biases.
Yo vivia en Cordoba por muchos anos y me encantaria establecer un vinculo ahi con una facultad y los intereses academicos de mi facultad. Si te interesa una conversacion, mi mail es mriche22@lakers.mercyhurst.edu.
My name is David Mullich. I’ve been a game producer for over thirty years, teach game production at The Los Angeles Film School, and helped create the Boy Scout Game Design Merit Badge. I tweet daily on game design, gamification of the classroom, game-based learning, and game development for kids. My Twitter handle is @David_Mullich. Thank you.
My name is Jim Scullion. I teach Computer Games Development at the University of the West of Scotland/ My research interests are in virtual worlds and collaborative learning. Twitter @jimscullion
I’d add Jesper Juul @jesperjuul and Todd Harper @laevantine. Nice list! It’s a little overwhelming.
My name is Sebastian Standke. I’m from Germany and managed to publish some articles for Game Studies-anthologies, mostly with uncommon topics: connections between theatre and games, the embodyment of GLaDOS, the flow phenomenon at speedrunning sessions, … Actually I work on a calendar-project about digital games culture as well as on an anthology about atmosphere in games as a aesthetical strategy – together with the German media and culture scholar Christian Huberts. For that we still search for some game designers to answer us three questions about their work. You can find our Call for Interviews in English here: http://christianhuberts.blogspot.de/2013/05/betweenworlds-interviews.html
It’d be great if you could add us in your list:
Christian Huberts | Twitter: @ChristianHaH | Homepage: http://christianhuberts.blogspot.de/
Sebastian Standke | Twitter: @s_standke | (Kinda homepage: http://superlevel.de/author/sebastian/ )
Thank you!
Don’t forget Lennart Nacke (@acagamic), whose work was recently presented on the New Yorker website (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/11/the-psychology-of-first-person-shooter-games.html). His research group’s website is: http://hcigames.businessandit.uoit.ca/
As for myself (@elisamekler), I’m a PhD student in psychology, tweeting often about motivation and games.
I’m currently in the last year of my Bsc Psychology. My final year project is focussed around Action Games on Aggression and Hostility.
I am hoping to take this research further to investigate effects of video games on a wide range of research areas using a number of different research methods.
Thank you for this invaluable list. Jamie, you’re just too damn useful to bloggers. Especially those of us who really care about empirical research.
I study games, literature, and interactive storytelling. @tbxsmason
And thank you so much for this valuable list!
Tina M Gonzales @tmgTeaching Will be creating gamification classes for adults.
Priscilla Haring @ThePrisca Focus on the psychology in gaming – effect research – evidence based – current PhD research “Gaming to cope” http://www.priscillaharing.info/?page_id=1281
I created a twitter list https://twitter.com/startmyquest/lists/video-game-academics-2 of all these from the original crowdsourced google doc. If you add yourself and anyone else you think should be on it. I’ll periodically keep the twitter list up-to-date too. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Am04dkUpi5bOdHFiWDU2MmNuTjFTRUowazNIY2FGX3c&usp=sharing#gid=0
Oh and thanks for creating the list in the first place Jamie. I certainly found some great links and people from it.
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Hi. Your site is awesome! I have a blog on using parser-based Interactive Fiction for foreign language learning: http://www.theswanstation.com. Twitter: @creedpatton. Cheers!
Hi, we’re a games development studio and research agency based in the UK. Have a look at our @dubit and @dubitgames accounts and you should find plenty there worth sharing. Be great if you could add our accounts too, our site is dubitlimited.com
Yvette Wohn, PhD (@arcticpenguin). I study social network games
Hello everyone, I’m Christopher Michael Yap, and I am currently a PhD candidate at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (http://www.naist.jp). My research focus is interactive narrative in digital games. These days I have been becoming particularly interested in the ideas surrounding emergent narrative in games.
Concurrently, I am also a narrative designer and producer at Plain Box Interactive (http://plain-box.com), a small indie game studio working out of Japan.
I am also fervently interested in advocacy for Game Studies. To that end, I have spoken at PAX East 2014 on a panel on Mythology in Games (http://youtu.be/WtjAzMj-bIg).
You can find me at @smart_bad
Sebastian Deterding – @dingtweets – Gamification, ethics, user experience
Lindsay Grace – @mindtoggle – Game design
Kathrin Gerling – @kathringerling – Human-computer Interaction
Bob De Schutter – @bobdeschutter – Games and ageing, game design, games and learning, motivation
Lennart Nacke – @acagamic – User experience, game design
Karolien Poels – @KPoels – Player experience, consumer psychology
Wijnand IJsselsteijn – @psych_tech – human-computer interaction, neuropsychology
Johannes Breuer – @matteagle09 – communication psychology
Malte Elson – @matoesermalte – mediapsychology, effects
Ashley Brown – @gamergrrl – game design, sexuality in rpgs
It should be Jesse Schell, not Jessee Schnell
Hi all, my name is James Butler (@Clock_punk on Twitter), a researcher in clinical gaming studies to promote environmental learning (The Lakescraft Project at Lancaster University, UK), research on cognitive mapping procedures, and a general interest in the design of digital worlds and player interaction – a rather mixed bag, but exteremely interconnected. Always enjoy chatting with fellow researchers in the field.