Games have always required people to make decisions. A player may need to choose a route, manage limited resources, recognise a pattern, cooperate with others or change strategy after an unexpected result. What looks like simple play can therefore create a useful environment for exploring how people think, learn and respond to information.
For researchers, games offer an unusual combination of structure and freedom. The rules establish a controlled environment, while players still have opportunities to make meaningful choices. This makes both digital and traditional games valuable subjects for research into psychology, computing, communication and human behaviour. At the University of East Anglia, researchers have explored games in areas including cognitive modelling, misinformation, cybersecurity and learning.
Games as Models of Decision-Making
A game can simplify a complicated problem while preserving the decisions that researchers want to study. Chess, strategy games and other competitive experiences require players to consider possible actions and anticipate consequences.
UEA research published in 2026 examined strategic planning in competitive board games using procedural knowledge space theory. The study used games including tic-tac-toe and its numerical variant Pick15 to investigate how people solve problems and develop strategies. An experiment involving 148 participants was used to examine how different levels of abstraction represented participants’ problem-solving behaviour.
This type of research demonstrates that games can provide more than entertainment. They can become controlled environments in which researchers observe patterns in human decision-making.
Why Strategy Matters
Strategic games are particularly interesting because successful play often depends on recognising relationships between actions and outcomes. A player must decide what information is important, predict what might happen next and adjust their approach when circumstances change.
Prior experience can also affect how people approach the same challenge. In the UEA study, abstract representations provided a better fit for participants with prior experience of tic-tac-toe, suggesting that experience can influence the strategies people use when solving related problems.
This illustrates one reason games are useful for psychology research. The same rules can be presented to multiple participants while researchers compare how experience, knowledge and decision-making processes influence performance.
Serious Games and Misinformation
Not all research games are designed around traditional competition. Some are created specifically to address real-world problems.
Misinformation is one example. Researchers have investigated whether carefully designed games can help people recognise misleading information by allowing them to experience common techniques used to create or spread it.
UEA research into serious games has focused extensively on this area. A 2026 review examined the relationship between inoculation theory and game design in misinformation interventions, identifying questions about how game mechanics and psychological processes work together.
A doctoral thesis associated with the same research programme examined the collaborative card game Fake News and investigated how players experienced misinformation interventions. The research used both quantitative and qualitative methods, allowing the researcher to examine measurable outcomes as well as participants’ experiences during play.
Learning Through Interaction
One advantage of games is that they allow people to learn through action. Instead of simply receiving information about a problem, players can interact with a simulated situation and observe the consequences of their choices.
This approach can be useful in educational settings because feedback can occur as part of the activity itself. A player might make a decision, see what happens and then reconsider the next move.
Games can also encourage collaboration. A group activity can require participants to communicate, share information and develop a common strategy. These interactions create additional opportunities for researchers to examine how people learn together.
UEA’s research into game-based misinformation interventions has specifically examined collaborative and experiential aspects of play. Its work suggests that the value of serious games cannot always be understood through a single numerical measure of performance; the experience of playing can provide important information too.
Games and Cybersecurity
The principles of serious games can also be applied to cybersecurity. Security threats often involve human behaviour, including decisions about suspicious messages, passwords, links and requests for information.
Interactive games can place users inside realistic scenarios without exposing them to actual risks. Players can learn to recognise patterns and understand how social engineering techniques work by responding to simulated situations.
UEA research connected with serious games includes work on The disPHISHinformation Game, a collaborative game designed around digital social engineering and phishing. The project forms part of broader research into how game design can support resistance to misinformation and deceptive online techniques.
This illustrates how gaming can connect computing with behavioural research. Technical security problems often involve human decisions, making interactive methods especially relevant.
The Growing Role of Game Research
The academic study of games now spans far more than game programming. Researchers can investigate strategy, psychology, communication, learning, cybersecurity, creativity and social behaviour through different types of play.
Games also make it possible to study concepts that are difficult to reproduce in ordinary experiments. A competitive game can provide structured decisions, while a serious game can simulate an unfamiliar situation and record how participants respond.
The diversity of research at UEA reflects this interdisciplinary potential. Its research outputs include work on competitive games and cognitive modelling as well as serious games designed around misinformation and digital security.
Why Games Are Valuable Research Tools
Games are useful research environments because they combine rules, interaction and decision-making. Players are not simply answering isolated questions; they are operating inside a system where their choices can change what happens next.
That makes games particularly valuable for studying strategic thinking and behavioural responses. It also explains why researchers continue to explore games beyond their conventional role as entertainment.
As game technology and research methods develop, interactive experiences may provide even more opportunities to investigate how people learn, communicate and make decisions. The study of game-based learning, serious games and strategic play shows that the relationship between games and academia is broader than it first appears.
Games can be places to compete, create and have fun, but they can also function as structured environments for asking important questions about human behaviour. Their combination of challenge, choice and feedback makes them a distinctive tool for understanding how people respond when the outcome depends on the decisions they make.
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