Games like EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot occasionally produce natural experiments in social science: situations that, through no intent of the designer, offer controlled variations on a phenomenon of theoretical interest. This paper examines two examples, both of which involve the theory of...

Games like EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot occasionally produce natural experiments in social science: situations that, through no intent of the designer, offer controlled variations on a phenomenon of theoretical interest. This paper examines two examples, both of which involve the theory of...

This paper provides a case study of how a board game can be modified to generate a serious game. We argue that board games are an interesting medium for serious games, especially when the goal is to teach players about particularly complex systems. In that case, the transparency of a board game...

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...