2024/06/15 by April Tyack, Elisa D. Mekler · 1 voice · 40 citations
Decision Sciences · Engineering · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Digital Games and Media #Educational Games and Gamification #Engineering #Engineering ethics #Epistemology #Political science #Popularity #Psychology #Scholarship #Self-determination theory #Social psychology #Sociology #Technology Adoption and User Behaviour
paper · pdf · doi:10.1145/3673230
published in ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 31(3), 1-74 (Association for Computing Machinery)
openalex created_date 2024/05/23 · openalex publication_date 2024/06/15 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
Self-determination theory (SDT), a psychological theory of human motivation, is a prominent paradigm in human–computer interaction (HCI) research on games. However, our prior literature review observed a trend towards shallow applications of the theory. This follow-up work takes a broader view—examining SDT scholarship on games, a wider corpus of SDT-based HCI games research (N = 259), and perspectives from a games industry practitioner conference—to help explain current applications of SDT. Our findings suggest that perfunctory applications of the theory in HCI games research originate in part from within SDT scholarship on games, which itself exhibits limited engagement with theoretical tenets. Against this backdrop, we unpack the popularity of SDT in HCI games research and identify conditions underlying the theory’s current use as an oft-unquestioned paradigm. Finally, we outline avenues for more productive SDT-informed games research and consider ways towards more intentional practices of theory use in HCI.