Made-to-order games

I am a social psychologist (and game enthusiast/procrastinator) and some of the research that I do would be really interesting to put into a flash game format — this would enable me to run studies (collect data) and have it be fun for participants at the same time.

I was wondering whether anyone would be interested in working on a made-to-order game of this sort. I don’t have a huge budget, but I do have some money — and the games would be very simple.

One possible example: I study the sunk cost effect in different contexts — this is the idea that once people have “invested” in something, they often feel compelled to justify that investment, even if it means investing more money in a losing venture. In a game format, imagine a very simple car racing game. First, people would (sometimes) have to decide whether or not to pay a race entry fee. Then, in some instances, right before the race you learn that your car has a high risk of malfunctioning in some way. A sunk cost study would test whether people who had paid an entry fee were more likely to enter the race anyway.

Then there would also be a simple racing part — it would be a fun little game and I could collect data.

Any thoughts? Suggestions for where to go to find someone to help me with this? Any takers? Thanks!

Would the game be intended as an aid to your research in the lab, or to surrepticiously test net gamers, or to explain your area to the wider public? (All are fine by me).

From what I read, he wants a game that gathers data about how people react to different situations (his example being the car breaking down).

Lysis: the idea would be to test people, either in the lab or a wider public — in both cases there would be an “informed consent” process, so people would know that we are collecting data, although we would not inform them about the particular hypotheses until after they had played. Also, this would be a good teaching device, whereby the player would learn about the effect being studied in a hands-on way. Thanks for your interest.

p.s. I’m reposting this on the “collaboration” forum, since it seems to be more appropriate there.

You made an exact same topic in two different forums?