Game Development and Social Science

This short article discusses ways that game development and social science can help each other. Games are increasingly social; even single-player titles spawn communities of interest. These communities cannot be ignored and, like all other human communities, they spawn emergent markets and politics that are tough to manage. While these are design problems, they directly replicate policy issues that social scientists have studied for centuries. At the same time, the academic community ought to start taking advantage of the amazing power of games as research tools. Social scientists and game designers have much to gain, and while they are professionally distant now, they should start working together more often