What is Game-Play

This chapter will discuss the growing importance of applying considered rationales to which games are chosen for study, whether it be for ethnography, classroom use, or anything else. A brief overview of how games are currently being chosen for study is presented through a meta analysis of studies with games that were published between 2003 and 2006 in order to demonstrate that most published games studies do not include a supported rationale for the games chosen. The chapter will then present various ways that game choices can be justified, and propose and explain a data fusion technique that can be applied to game reviews and other lists in order to facilitate representative and defensible game choices.