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Videogame Engagement: Psychological Frameworks

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Encyclopedia of Computer Graphics and Games

Synonyms

Absorption; Enjoyment; Gratification; Immersion; Motivation; Presence

Definition

Answering the questions of how and why people engage with videogames or why they enjoy certain videogames more than the others has been a perennial effort in videogame studies. On the one hand, designers and developers strive to discover novel ways to make videogames more enjoyable, immersive, and gratifying. On the other hand, researchers mobilize gameplay data to cluster players into categories depending on how they engage with videogame content and explain their behavior types. One prevalent resource to explain videogame engagement behavior has been the adaptation of previous psychological theories and frameworks to the field (Boyle et al. 2012; Şengün 2016; Balkaya and Catak 2016). Typically, these theories and frameworks were developed for non-game contexts (e.g., sports, job performance, self-motivation, technology use, economic behavior, risk-taking, etc.), and they are accompanied by a...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology CSAIL, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Sercan Şengün

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  1. Sercan Şengün
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Correspondence to Sercan Şengün .

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  1. Newton Lee Laboratories, LLC, Tujunga, California, USA

    Newton Lee

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Şengün, S. (2018). Videogame Engagement: Psychological Frameworks. In: Lee, N. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computer Graphics and Games. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08234-9_158-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08234-9_158-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-08234-9

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