The mental gymnastics of thinking about video game research
Yoda and aliens vs. specific research and abstract concepts
LFG: Learning from Games is a series dedicated to making the complex world of video game research just a little easier to understand. I post about twice a month in between my Science Shorts, Coming Soon, and Impressions series. Welcome to LFG #05-2026, where we explore how shifting between specific and abstract concepts.
👋🏼Hello JOMT Reader!
I realize I’ve been mostly silent during the month of April. It was a hard month at work: part of my job requires me to think about the futures of all 1500 people in the company1. It’s a lot. And I have not had the mental bandwidth to think about much else. As I described to a coworker, it feels like we are living on the edge of the expanding universe, not knowing what we are expanding into.
It’s equal parts dread and excitement.
But that time away has given me some clarity2. And it got me thinking about the ways clarity plays a role in gaming research. More specifically, why it feels like research takes a long time to come to any meaningful and applicable conclusions. I think it has to do with the difference between something that is clear and specific versus something that is fuzzy and abstract.
Let me explain, starting with aliens.
On specific and abstract aliens
Fortunately or unfortunately, we have not yet made contact with life outside of Earth. But suppose we made first contact. Would they be friendly? Will they want to abduct us for experiments? What would they look like?
Would they look like this?
Or this?
Whatever they may look like, one thing is for certain: they probably wouldn’t look like us. But we instinctively know that if an alien looks one way, the next one will likely look different. That’s because the ones we made first contact with are specific examples of aliens. The xenomorph and Yoda are clear representation of a much broader and abstract grouping of beings that we call aliens.
Specific and abstract research
Published research articles are the xenomorphs and Yodas of the research world. They are specific answers to specific questions under the broad and abstract umbrella of gaming research.
Just like how you wouldn’t conclude that all aliens look like Yoda or want to eat you like the xenomorph, we can’t jump to conclusions and make generalization from the specific research being published. Unfortunately, our intuition about alien appearances doesn’t translate well to research, especially when popular media amplifies a small and specific part of the whole story.
A generalization can be made if enough specific research all point in the same direction. That generalization still has to overcome contradicting popular beliefs: for us in the gaming world, that contradiction is the general statement that video gaming is bad. We have enough evidence now to know that video gaming isn’t bad and can be beneficial. But it has taken two decades for that belief to shift (and not completely either).
Moving quickly between specific and abstract research
The description about living on the edge of the universe is the partial answer to being able to recognize and switch between Yodas and aliens. I think a lot about the best way to pivot as the technologies we use change on what feels like a weekly and even daily basis. That same thinking works when considering video game research.
Specific research questions give us a unique perspective. With enough unique perspectives, we can start to understand the whole picture. But just as the parable of the blind men and an elephant teaches us, we need to recognize that we aren’t seeing the whole picture right from the beginning.
What we first thought was a tree could be something else if it could also be a snake or rope. Likewise, there’s probably a lot more to video games are bad if other people are also saying that video games are good.
But it’s hard to update your thinking and separate the signal from the noise. It’s a big reason why I post about video game research in the first place: to balance the bad with the good and present it in a balanced way to help you come to your own conclusions.
Changing your mind is sometimes seen as a sign of fickleness and unreliability. I hope, living through these times, that we start to see it as a sign of mental flexibility: the willingness to update your view from tree to elephant.
If you liked what you read, please consider giving this post a like and share with your community! What games are you most looking forward to? Let me know below!
I’m not a CEO. Nor am I in HR. In a nutshell, I’m part of a team responsible for responsible use of AI in the company. With all the AI talk these days, it’s a lot.
Or, what counts for clarity these days. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, please know that you aren’t alone.