This book provides an introduction and overview of the increasingly important topic of gamer psychology and behavior by presenting a range of theoretic perspectives and empirical evidence casting new light on understanding gamer behavior and designing interactive gaming experiences that maximize fun. This book aims to provide a snapshot on research approaches/advances in player psychology and behavior, discuss issues, solutions, challenges, and needs for player behavior research, and report gameplay experience and lessons as well as industry case studies from both social sciences and engineering perspectives. The nine chapters in this book, which are divided into three sections: Neuro-Psychology and Gaming; Player Behavior and Gameplay; Player Psychology and Motivations, do not represent all the topics in the psychology of gaming, however, they include a variety of topics in this field: the effects of violent video games on cognitive processes, the reward systems in the human brain and the concept of 'fun', goal-directed player behavior and game choices, psychological player profiling techniques, game design requirements and player psychology, motivational gamer profiles, and many more.
This book is suitable for students and professionals with different disciplinary backgrounds such as computer science, design, software engineering, psychology, interactive media, and information systems. Students will be interested in the theory of gamer psychology and its impact on game design. Professionals will be interested in the fundamentals of gamer behavior and how interactive virtual environments can improve user experience.
Barbaros Bostan is an Associate Professor in the Information Systems Department at the Yeditepe University/Turkey. He has a Ph.D. in Information Systems (2007) from Marmara University, an M.B.A. (2003) from Yeditepe University, and a B.S. in Electronics and Communication Engineering (2001) from Istanbul Technical University. He worked as a post-doc researcher at IDM Institute, Games Lab of the National University of Singapore between 2008 and 2010. His research areas include computer games, presence, interactivity, gamer psychology, gaming motivations and player profiling. Bostan has teaching experience in the areas of computer games, computer networks and interactive narrative. He is a member of the ACM, Computers in Entertainment Editorial Board.
