Quantifying Video Gaming Expertise

Abstract

Participants’ self- report of their level of expertise in video game play (VG) is the basis for establishing a baseline of VG experience in many studies. In this study, expert players assessed participants’ actual game play and rated it based on the number of points earned in the game and the decisions they made during their game play with an included rubric. The expert rating was regressed on the self-report of the number of hours of play per week, the self-rating of video game expertise and a spatial cognition measure. The findings suggest that self-report of expertise in video game play is inaccurate.

Appendix: Rubric

Rating	Engagement	Reaction to contact	Unnecessary action	In a nutshell
1	Player seems to never search for the enemy. The effort is poor and ineffective, shooting inaccuracy due to a lack of aim	Player seems to never know when he gets shot, showing no reaction to the red tabs on the screen. Not reactive to explosives. Movement is stilted	Player roams aimlessly through-out the map and does weird things like go prone for no reason and crawl around often	Dies all the time
2	Player may make an attempt to search for the enemy but may have difficulties Shooting and aiming are not precise osometimes, resulting in more deaths than kills	Player still may not respond to being shot or incoming grenades However, the player seems to have a general understanding of how to move on the game	Player roams around aim-lessly and rarely does things that serve no purpose in killing the enemy	Dies most of the time
3	Player searches for enemy and engages the enemy. Does an average job of killing the enemy, the same amount of kills as deaths. Aiming attempts accurate shooting is often	Player on average does a decent job at reacting to being shot and locates the individual who shot him. Player tries to run away from incoming handheld explosives	Player roams around for just a little while maybe to get used to the map or controls	Dies about the same amount as kills
4	Player searches to engage the enemy and shoots before the enemy shoots back. Aiming is precise and shooting is accurate. Kills are always higher than deaths	Player discovers who shot him or her and returns fire on opponent. Player successfully runs away from handheld explosives	Player doesn’t roam around much at all or perform any weird actions	Dies sometimes
5	Player seems to know where the enemy is going to be all of the time. Player always is the first to shoot and in most cases the last to shoot. Aiming is precise and shooting is accurate and there are always way more kills with minimal deaths	Player discovers who shot him or her quickly and returns fire to kill the opponent. Player also successfully runs away from handheld explosives and sometimes will pick it up and throw it back at the enemy	Player is so good that he or she seems to already know the controls and perhaps even the map. There is no hindrance of lack of know-ledge of controls or map	Dies rarely