Measuring: Overall player experience

Authors: Wijnand IJsselsteijn, Yvonne de Kort and Karolien Poels
Published: 2007
Number of questions: 33
Likert scale: Ratings are made on a 5-point Likert scale with anchors as follows: "0 - not at all", "1 - slightly", "2 - moderately", "3 - fairly", and "4 - extremely"

Subscales: Seven sub-scales measuring different experiences: (1) Immersion; (2) Flow; (3) Competence; (4) Positive affect; (5) Negative affect; (6) Tension; and (7) Challenge

Cite this scale:

The GEQ and its validation have not been published in a peer reviewed venue. Below are the original papers that describe the seven components of the GEQ but the papers do not contain the questionnaire itself. Nonetheless, these citation have been used in academic literature to reference the GEQ:

The first paper in which the authors mention that they are in the process of developing the GEQ in the conclusions to the paper - this paper is frequently cited when referencing the GEQ but the questionnaire or research related to its development are not present in this paper:

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Another paper that provides details of the focus group study that defined the components of player experience of the GEQ. This paper is frequently cited when referencing the GEQ - the authors describe the seven categories of the GEQ but the questionnaire is not provided in this paper:

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The Eindhoven University of Technology provide the following citation for published (not peer-reviewed) version of the questionnaire:

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Questionnaire items

• Immersion:

  Also referred to as Sensory and Imaginative Immersion. Immersion is assessed with six items reflecting aspects of how strongly connected with the game players felt.

• I was interested in the game's story.
• I felt imaginative.
• I felt that I could explore things.
• It felt like a rich experience.
• It was aesthetically pleasing.
• I found it impressive.

• Flow:

  Is assessed with five items, which indicate whether players lost track of their own effort and or the passage of time during the game.

• I was fully occupied with the game.
• I lost track of time.
• I forgot about everything around me.
• I was deeply concentrated in the game.
• I lost connection with the outside world.

• Competence:

  Is assessed with five items relating to how well players judged their own performance against the game's goals.

• I felt skilful.
• I was good at it.
• I felt competent.
• I felt successful
• I was fast at reaching the game's targets.

• Positive Affect:

  Is related to positive emotional experiences.

• I felt content.
• I felt happy.
• It felt good.
• I thought it was fun.
• I enjoyed it.

• Negative Affect:

  Is related to negative emotional experiences.

• It gave me a bad mood.
• I thought about other things.
• I felt bored.
• I found it tiresome.

• Tension:

  Also referred to as Tension/Annoyance. Tension is assessed with 3 items related to these specific negative emotions.

• I felt annoyed.
• I felt frustrated.
• I felt irritable.

• Challenge:

  Is assessed with five items, which indicate the degree to which players found the game to be difficult or challenging.

• I felt pressured.
• I felt time pressure.
• I had to put a lot of effort into it.
• I thought it was hard.
• I felt challenged.

Using the questionnaire

The questionnaire be used as a whole (all 33 items) to measure overall game experience. To evaluate each of the seven components of this experience (e.g. immersion), you can use individual sub-scales.

When to use? The questionnaire is meant to be administered immediately after the game session has finished.

Ideally, items should be presented to participants in random order and without naming the seven experience components.

Scoring: To score each challenge type, take the sum (no missing values) or the average (if you have missing values) of the Likert scale responses from the items belonging to each challenge type.

Reliability and Validity

Validation: Despite this questionnaire being widely used in research, the results of the questionnaire's full validation were not published by the original authors. However, it has recently been validated together with another widely used but non-validated questionnare PENS in the following article: Johnson, D., Gardner, M.J. and Perry, R. (2018) Validation of two game experience scales: the player experience of need satisfaction (PENS) and game experience questionnaire (GEQ). International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 118, pp.38-46. In this article, the authors show that the GEQ' purported structure is partially supported, Johnson et al.(2018) propose a revised five factor structure instead. According to this article, the following constructs have some empirical support: flow (GEQ), immersion (GEQ), competence (GEQ) and positive affect (GEQ). Three other constructs, as measured by the GEQ, are not empirically supported, with indications that they are conceptually overlapping with other constructs: negative affect, tension and challenge (which was suggest to be combined into a single negativity construct). The details of both the Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) can be found in this paper.

Availability: The Eindhoven University has shared the questionnaire here:
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