Prototyping Video Games for Understanding Abstract Concepts

Clarifying abstract concepts remains a challenge in research fields involving complex theoretical constructs, such as in psychology and social sciences: concepts may be coherent and theoretically plausible, yet difficult to envision concretely. Here, we propose video game prototyping as a methodology, or thinking tool, for developing and testing conceptual models grounded in concrete and testable situations. After presenting this approach, we illustrate its value with several examples from our recent work on collaboration. We believe that this methodology is applicable to a broad range of domains seeking to elucidate concepts and bridge the gap between theory and application.