This PhD position investigates how gameplay affects player experience. You will study gameplay as behaviour, engineer human-centred gameplay features, and develop methods to link in-game actions to cognitive and experiential outcomes.
Background: Games influence motivation, cognition, and well-being, yet gameplay itself remains difficult to measure objectively. This PhD addresses the challenge of characterizing gameplay through human behaviour and experience, creating reproducible, data-driven links between gameplay and player experience.
Your Role: You will develop and validate methods to study gameplay and player experience. Your work includes designing experimental protocols, creating gameplay feature engineering frameworks, operationalising experience constructs, and validating measures across games. You will turn abstract experience concepts into measurable, reusable methods.
Context: You will contribute to the
ERC Starting Grant GAMECHAR (Scalable AI-Driven Framework for Gameplay Characterization;
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101220528) within the
Human-Technology Interaction (HTI) group at Eindhoven University of Technology.
HTI brings together psychology, AI, data science, and design to study how interactive systems shape human behaviour and experience. You will collaborate closely with another PhD researcher and a postdoctoral researcher, and work with national and international partners.
https://www.tue.nl/en/research/research-groups/innovation-sciences/human-technology-interactionThe position is embedded in TU/e’s strong AI ecosystem and connected to the
Eindhoven AI Systems Institute (EAISI) and game research facilities.
Societal Impact: By developing transparent and reusable research methods, your work supports responsible game design, evidence-based digital health interventions, and European policy on digital well-being and deceptive design.