Measuring player creativity in digital entertainment games using the Creativity in Gaming Scale

Abstract

Digital games are increasingly widely available, with many online services now offering the chance to play anytime, anywhere and have been argued to provide opportunities for players to be creative within an active, authentic, intrinsically motivating context. In this regard, creativity is no longer confined to the great accomplishments of geniuses but can be experienced by anyone in an informal and personally meaningful context. Although creativity has been investigated in areas such as education, the workplace and psychology, and metrics that exist in the form of psychometric and personality measures, there exist limited metrics that specifically focus on the forms of creative expression unique to digital games. Chapter 12 reports on the development of the Creativity in Gaming Scale (CGS) which emerged from the factor analysis of 71 online questionnaire items completed by 251 players, producing a 26-item, five-factor model. The CGS may be used as an alternative tool for open-world learning by not only measuring the effectiveness of digital games in facilitating creative behaviour in players but also providing guidance on what aspects of creativity are most important to the player experience.