äs Ä 1 Ei ftQ Video Games : CO CO A Human Factors Guide to Visual Display Design and Instructional System Design

K Electronic video games have many of the same technological and psychological characteristics that are found in military computer-based systems. For this reason, the video game is both a fascinating object of study and a valuable experimental apparatus. The results of two on-going research programs, both of which employ video games as experimental stimuli, are presented here. GS The first research program seeks to identify and exploit the frj« characteristics of video games in the design of game-based training devices. The second program is designed to explore the effects of electronic video display characteristics on perceptual judgments. The empirical results of these two programs are shown to have practical application in training device design and visual display design. U y Video Games and Training Device Design Although games in general have been employed as learning vehicles, the especially compelling characteristics of electronic video games have not been fully explored for possible exploitation in the design of computer-based training systems. In fact there is little empirical evidence regarding the perceived or salient qualities of these new electronic video games. !? Accordingly, the following experiment was designed to determine those m dimensions along which electronic video games are perceived to vary. Method Twenty right-handed male first-year college students served as subjects. The experimental stimuli consisted of ten commercial electronic video games and an "ideal" video game. The "ideal" video game was defined to subjects as their notion of the best or ideal video game, whether imaginary or real. The twenty subjects were asked to make pairwise comparisons of the similarity of the eleven video game stimuli. Judgments were made with the use of rating sca?.e in which 0 was defined as "these two games are not at all similar" and 100 was defined as "these twc games are exactly alike." All judgments were made in a commercial video game arcade closed to the public.