From Players to Participants: Citizen Science and Video Games to Understand Cognition

TL;DR

Citizen science video games enable large-scale, engaging cognitive research by integrating experimental tasks into entertaining experiences, offering scalability and ecological validity.

Contribution

This review highlights how citizen science video games transform entertainment into large-scale cognitive research, emphasizing design challenges and benefits.

Findings

Projects like Sea Hero Quest demonstrate large data collection from diverse populations.

Citizen science games improve ecological validity of cognitive experiments.

Designing scientifically rigorous and engaging games remains a key challenge.

Abstract

Citizen science is transforming how cognitive scientists study the human mind, and video games are at the heart of this shift. By embedding experimental tasks into engaging, game-like experiences, researchers can reach large, diverse populations while collecting rich behavioral data outside the lab. In this review, we explore how citizen science video games bridge the gap between players and participants, turning entertainment into large-scale cognitive research. Drawing on recent projects such as Sea Hero Quest and The Music Lab, we outline the key benefits of this approach: scalability, ecological validity, and public engagement. We also examine the challenges of designing games that are scientifically rigorous, ethically sound, and meaningful for both researchers and players. Through professional game developer insights, we highlight what it takes to develop a successful citizen science video game for cognitive science, and why this approach is still rare in the literature.