Can a digital game serve as a measurement instrument?

Decisores Virtuais and PsyFun · 2013–2015

The project "Virtual Deciders: computational models for decision-making on resource division" ("Decisores Virtuais: modelos computacionais para tomadas de decisão sobre divisão de recursos", FACEPE, 2013–2015), under Giordano Cabral's responsibility, rebuilt classic behavioral economics experiments as digital games. It included a master's scholarship, PIBITI, PIBIC and PIBIC Ensino Médio (high school) grants — six undergraduate research fellows, two of them at Escola Técnica Estadual Cícero Dias: Luiz Delando Santos Moreira Júnior, Eliane Pio, Juliane Travassos Vieira, Bruno Veloso, Décio Vinícius Farias da Silva and Erick Haendel. Samuel Luna Martins's dissertation, Impact of digital entertainment tools for resource division experiments, (UFRPE, 2013, FACEPE), is the first in this line. The PsyFun group — digital games for cognitive psychology — was founded at UFRPE in October 2013.

Lessons Learned · 2017

Lessons learned about the development of digital entertainment tools for experiments on resources distribution, with Samuel Luna Martins, Guilherme Ribeiro Eulálio Cabral, Luiz Delando Santos Moreira Junior and Erick Haendel Costa Fontes Martins (Computers in Human Behavior 70: 523–534, 2017; doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.01.023). It compiles what the team learned when designing digital entertainment tools tailored to scientific experiments, to guide those wishing to build their own. The first journal article in this research area.

Slingshot Challenge and Star Mines · 2017–2022

Two digital games structured as a prisoner's dilemma, registered as software in 2017 and 2018, with Guilherme Ribeiro Eulálio Cabral and Samuel Martins. The article validating them — Slingshot Challenge and Star Mines: Two digital games as a prisoner's dilemma to assess cooperation in children, with Guilherme Cabral, Leonardo Rodrigues Sampaio and Raick Bastos Santana (Behavior Research Methods 54: 597–610, 2022, published online in 2021; doi.org/10.3758/s13428-021-01661-y) — reports two experiments with 162 children aged 6 to 12. They understood the game dynamics, were motivated, cooperated more in Star Mines than in Slingshot Challenge and cooperated conditionally; sex and cooperation in the first round were associated with greater cooperation. The conclusion is that both games are feasible, reliable and valid instruments for measuring cooperative behavior in childhood. It is the only article in the CV published in a psychology methods journal.

Further developments · 2021

Correlating Big Five Primary Personality Dimensions with Musical Preferences (SBCM 2021, with Luiz Delando Santos Moreira Júnior and Guilherme Cabral); MySoundtrack: a tool for personalized and adaptive music listening while playing games (SBGames 2021); and Delando's master's thesis on predicting podcast popularity (2021).

The classroom as a laboratory · 2025

In Jogos e Dilemas Sociais (Games and Social Dilemmas) (IF760, 2025.1), with Guilherme Cabral, nine teams made nine games, each with an explicitly stated dilemma, an experimental design, a lesson on ethical limits and data collection within the class itself. See Teaching.

Platforms · 2026

A catalog of 1,202 moddable games for research on social dilemmas, licensed under CC BY 4.0 (github.com/giordanorec/psyfun-catalogo; catalogpsyfun.vercel.app); PsyFun Platform, which hosts the games and collects data without requiring an account or displaying ads, featuring Açude, a game about the use of a shared resource (psyfun-platform.vercel.app); and Pixels PsyFun, for setting up experiments with ten classic games in rooms with access codes (pixels-psyfun.vercel.app). Addresses accessed via HTTP on September 23, 2026.

Guilherme Ribeiro Eulálio Cabral (UNIVASF); Leonardo Rodrigues Sampaio and Raick Bastos Santana; Samuel Luna Martins; Luiz Delando Santos Moreira Júnior; Erick Haendel Costa Fontes Martins.

Continues in: PsyFun, a collaboration between CIn/UFPE and UNIVASF.