GEQ (Game Engagement/Experience Questionnaire): A Review of Two Papers

In recent years, research on the psychological aspects and assessment of video games has become more and more important due to their impact in entertainment and education. The development of psychometric instruments to measure different factors of a player’s engagement and skills in playing video games and to measure different factors of the game’s playability and attractiveness is essential to this research. This article reviews two papers on measuring the player’s subjective experiences playing the game by IJsselsteijn et al. (2007, Characterising and Measuring User Experiences in Digital Games. ACE Conference ’07, June 13–15, Salzburg, Austria) and the player’s level of engagement in playing games by Brockmyer et al. (2009, The Development of the Game Engagement Questionnaire: A Measure of Engagement in Video Game-playing. J. Exp. Soc. Psychol., 45, 624–634). While approaching the topic with very different purposes and methodologies, both papers contribute important ideas and useful scales that should be used by researchers in the field.