The Gamer Response and Decision Framework

Abstract

Aim. This article presents the Gamer Response and Decision Framework as a tool for understanding how people interpret, make decisions, and learn during their video gaming experiences. Background. The Gamer Response and Decision Framework combines Rosenblatt’s Reader Response Theory with a variety of other concepts and frameworks related to new literacies, multimodality, learning theory, psychology, and video gaming. This Framework illustrates that every individual has unique experiences, knowledge, skills, agency, self-efficacy, and goals, and these components influence how people interpret and make decisions during video gameplay, which affects how the game unfolds as a unique experience for each gamer. Together these ideas illustrate that no two gamers have the same experience when playing a video game. Understanding video gameplay experiences is important as it represents a dynamic process in which gamers interpret a wide variety of multimodal symbols, experiment and learn in these digital environments, and solve complex problems in order to progress in the game. Conclusion. The Gamer Response and Decision Framework can be used to understand, investigate, and analyze video gameplay experiences and has significant implications for our understanding the thought, decision-making, and learning processes that gamers experience. In the future, researchers in a variety of fields including education, game studies, and game design can use this framework to analyze how people interact with video games.