Game Designer Self Efficacy

In just a couple weeks I will finally, after almost 10 long years, be done with my schooling!! I will have completed all necessary requirements for a PhD in psychology!!!!!

My studies have focused on a couple of things.

First, I have tried to teach students in undergraduate psychology courses as much as I possibly could. I have a real desire to help people learn in the most effective way possible. Teaching students in those courses (Introductory Psychology, Psychological Statistics, Research Methods in Social Sciences, and Psychometrics) provided me with great experience in understanding how things work in a classroom, how to most effectively interact with students, etc. Overall, it was a great experience and I hope to be able to do it more in the future.

Second, I have been involved in evaluating programs, helping those involved and those who run the programs determine if the program is working as was envisioned, if those going through the program are gaining the desired learning and experiences, etc. In those efforts, I have spent a lot of time developing surveys and measures. I am currently engaged in developing a measure of self-efficacy (or as Albert Bandura [2006] puts it, our belief in our ability to produce particular outcomes or to complete given tasks).

I am always looking for a way of combining my school with my passion: game design (board/card/etc, not video)! So, what I would love to do is help others learn to improve their game design abilities, talents, whatever you would like to call them. I think self efficacy is a great place to start, as it helps us understand how we look at our own abilities. This can then lead to ways of changing our beliefs about our abilities, which will help us improve what we do. As Bandura (2006) says, "knowing how to build a sense of efficacy and how it works provides further guidelines for structuring experiences that enable people to realize desired personal and social changes" (p. 319).

On that note, I plan on developing a scale that will measure a person's game design self efficacy, in other words, a way of measuring a person's belief of his/her ability to design games, get games published, etc. To do this, I'll first be creating a bank of questions that ask people about their game design abilities. These will then be compiled into a survey type form. Then I'll pilot the survey with lots of people, analyze the data, revise as needed, pilot again, etc. I'm sure it will take a while, but hopefully there will be something of some value come out of the whole process at the end.

I think that a study of game design and those who engage in it is a worthwhile effort (like I said, game design is my passion). We've seen movement toward offering courses, writing books, etc. on the subject. Hopefully this will be a meaningful contribution of some sort.


Bandura, A. (2006). Guide for constructing self-efficacy scales. Self-efficacy beliefs of adolescents, 5, 307-337.