BU Research Blog

Last April representing the research team from Bournemouth University, Sarah Hodge presented cross-discipline PhD research in a competitive symposium in Las Vegas organised by Nick Bowman. The research team included Jacqui Taylor and John McAlaney from the department of Psychology, Davide Melacca and Christos Gatzidis from the department of Creative technology and Eike Anderson for the National Centre for Computer Animation. Since then the research project was invited to contribute a chapter to a book related to the topics from the Symposium, which is due out this summer (see below for further details).

In the spirit of this collaboration, Nick came to BU this month to give a guest talk for the Psychology seminar series, which was open to all departments and faculties. The talk was related to the book from the symposium and was titled: Video Game Demand – Specifying and Measuring an Elusive Construct.

In this talk Nick proposes a model and scale of measuring the demands of video games on the user (see below for further details). It was wonderful to see those from other departments and faculties attending the talk, creating a diverse audience and an engaging atmosphere. The talk also supported the psychology undergraduates; particularly those that selected the Cyberpsychology final year unit, where they had been discussing Nick’s and colleagues research. It was a fantastic experience having Nick visiting Bournemouth from America, and we are looking forward to future collaborations with him.

Book: Bowman, N. D. (in press). Video games: A medium that demands our attention (Ed.). New York: Routledge

Chapter 7 contribution from BU: Hodge, S., McAlaney, J., Gatzidis, C., Anderson, E.F., Melacca, D. and Taylor., J. Applying Psychological Theory to in-game moral behaviors through the development of a purpose-made game.

Chapters related to Nick’s talk: Chapter 1 Bowman, N.D. The Demanding Nature of Video Game Play and Chapter 13 Bowman, N.D., Wasserman, J., and Banks., J. Development of the Video Game Demand Scale

If you would like more information about the research please contact: shodge@bournemouth.ac.uk