Research method
Curious, careful, cited.
The journal reads games through three lenses: what players do, what designers make, and what the evidence can responsibly support. Every research-led story ends with an APA 7 reference list and a link to each source.
The method
A citation should show where a claim ends.
Start with the source
Primary sources first: peer-reviewed papers, university research, recognised standards, and a studio’s own history for the details of its own success.
Match claim to evidence
Associations stay associations. Company-reported numbers stay labelled. A small sample does not become a rule because the sentence reads better.
Make the trail usable
Numbered markers sit under the section they support and jump to the full reference, with a DOI or a direct link wherever one exists.
What we read about
The questions around the board.
- Player habits
- How do context, sleep, perceived value and social reasons for play change what a session means?
- Success stories
- What do Stardew Valley, Hades, Celeste, The Sims, Pokémon GO, Minecraft, Tetris, Wordle and Monument Valley show, and what can they not prove?
- Inclusive design
- How can a game keep its challenge while widening the input, timing, sensory and cognitive routes into it?
- Short sessions
- What makes two minutes feel complete, interruptible and worth coming back to, without making the return an obligation?
A starting shelf
Selected sources.
Not endorsements and not a full bibliography: the families of source we return to when a story needs more than intuition.
World Health Organization — Gaming disorder (opens in a new tab)
Separates impaired control and meaningful harm from a simple count of hours.
Pew Research Center — Teens and video games today (opens in a new tab)
One clearly labelled U.S. sample of how common play is, and why teens play.
Martinez, Froehlich & Fogarty — Playing on Hard Mode (opens in a new tab)
Grounds our accessibility writing in how disabled players find, judge and adapt games.
Ryan, Rigby & Przybylski — The motivational pull of video games (opens in a new tab)
Autonomy, competence and relatedness: a vocabulary for enjoyment that is not about retention.
Keogh & Richardson — Waiting to play (opens in a new tab)
Informs how we write about fragmented attention and sessions that can be put down.
W3C — WCAG 2.2 (opens in a new tab)
Timing, interruption, motion, pointer targets and the use of colour, on the web.
MIT News — Teaching maker skills through gaming (opens in a new tab)
Useful on learning by making; read as a news account, not a controlled study.
Harvard Health Publishing — Brain-training claims (opens in a new tab)
A guardrail against promising broad cognitive benefits from a puzzle.