Development of the Kids Game Experience Questionnaire: A self report instrument to assess digital game experiences in children

Karolien Poels, Wijnand IJsselsteijn and Yvonne de Kort

Extended Abstract

Playing digital games is a popular leisure activity for children across gender and age groups. As such, this topic has gained a lot of interest with academic researchers from various fields of research. To date, the majority of studies focus on effects of playing games, both positive (e.g. mental rotation tasks) and negative (e.g. aggressive behaviour) ones. Other studies highlight the potential dangers of playing games, such as game addiction or desensitisation from real life. How children actually experience playing digital games is still underrepresented in most of these studies. Yet, this topic bears relevance for game researchers. First, game experience taps into the heart of playing and can unravel what exactly makes games fun or engaging. Second, experiences while playing can potentially moderate effects after gaming. Further, game developers can rely on insights in game experience to develop new, engaging games. It is impossible to come up with a single, all embracing word or concept that describes what children feel or experience when playing digital games. Children can have great fun when playing virtual tennis on the Nintendo Wii, whereas feelings of frustration can also come into play when one continuously hits the ball out. Some children enjoy virtual worlds like the SIM's which render the player into a immersive state by getting him or her fully drawn into a fantasy world. Furthermore, playing alone on a handheld console presumably entails other experiences than playing with online or co-located friends via a personal computer or a game console. Given this variety in game genres, game players, and game devices, game experience has to be studied as a multi-dimensional concept. Being able to measure these multiple dimensions in a reliable and valid way is one of the main challenges facing the field of game experience research. In this study we present the Kids Game Experience Questionnaire; a self report instrument to assess in-game experiences in children (i.e. 8-12 years). We aim for a self report measure that is sensitive, applicable over game genres and devices, and can be applied and filled out by children in a convenient, independent and time efficient way. The structure of the KidsGEQ is largely based on the Game Experience Questionnaire as developed earlier for an adult audience. The major challenge when developing a questionnaire for children is formulating items and anchor points that can be readily and easily interpreted. For the KidsGEQ, formulation of the items was based on an expert meeting with game developers experienced in designing for children and social scientists studying game experience in general, as well as on in depth interviewing and testing possible items with children who often play digital games. This resulted in a list of 49 items covering nine digital game experience dimensions. Besides the basic rationale and structure of the KidsGEQ, we present reliability of the items after use in a field experiment (n=31) with an outdoor digital game developed for young children.