The process of validating persuasive games involves demonstrating that
such games are changing or reinforcing specific sets of attitudes in their
players. The first wave of validation efforts consisted of simple effect
studies in which a full game was compared to other persuasive media or
straightforward control conditions. While this led to the conclusion that
some persuasive games did indeed ‘work’, it did not afford generalizations
on the viability of gaming as a persuasive medium. We describe these
first efforts before showing how subsequent studies are evolving from
determining the effects of individual games to testing player-oriented
experiential models accounting for multiple persuasive mechanisms. Our
conclusions draw on psychological and media-psychological theories of
persuasion to offer a roadmap to validating persuasive games.
