Video games have a history of being used to study phenomena in HCI and other disciplines. The use of video games as research tools is becoming more widespread in areas such as addiction, user experience, immersion, strategy and decision making. They offer an excellent way to motivate participants in studies, and by using online casual games researchers can potentially access hundreds of participants.

We invite submissions to this special issue of Entertainment Computing that address the methodological aspects of working with video games in experimental settings. The aim of the issue is to highlight the benefits, caveats and experiences of working with video games in research projects. The papers will not focus on the games themselves, but on their use to study wider phenomena. The special issue builds on the workshop of the same name held at ACM CHI 2010 (http://www.uclic.ucl.ac.uk/people/e.calvillo/ws_videogames/).

The issue is open to papers from *any* area of research that makes use of video games - for example, sociology, education, gender studies, human error, immersion - as long as the paper focuses on the methodological aspects of using games.

Two types of submissions will be considered:

* Research Papers (up to 18 pages): We invite researchers in all disciplines using video games as research instruments to submit papers addressing the following topics: the general problem of your research, how and why video games are used, an overview of results and a discussion of experiences and issues specific to using video games.

* Technical Notes (up to 6 pages): We invite researchers to share their expertise of using video games as research tools by submitting papers of up to 6 pages describing how specific technical challenges were overcome when using a particular game, platform or technique. Only a limited number of these will be accepted and they will be reviewed to the same high standards as research papers.

Please direct any questions to Eduardo Calvillo-Gámez (eduardo.calvillo@gmail.com) and submit your paper via Elsevier Electronic System (http://ees.elsevier.com/entcom/default.asp), for which you may have to register. Make sure you select the article type "Special issue: Video Games" when you submit your paper. When preparing your manuscript, please follow the Elsevier Guide for Authors (http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/717010/authorinstructions).

Timetable:

Please submit articles by October 10, 2010.  We aim to make final decisions on acceptance by the end of February 2011.

Guest Editors:

Eduardo H. Calvillo Gámez, Universidad Politécnica de San Luis Potosí (eduardo.calvillo@gmail.com)
Paul Cairns, University of York (pcairns@cs.york.ac.uk)
Jeremy Gow, Imperial College London (j.gow@imperial.ac.uk)