Self-Determination Theory (SDT), a major psychological theory of human motivation, has become increasingly popular in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research on games and play. However, it remains unclear how SDT has advanced HCI games research, or how HCI games scholars engage with the theory. We reviewed 110 CHI and CHI PLAY papers that cited SDT to gain a better understanding of the ways the theory has contributed to HCI games research. We find that SDT, and in particular, the concepts of need satisfaction and intrinsic motivation, have been widely applied to analyse the player experience and inform game design. Despite the popularity of SDT-based measures, however, prominent core concepts and mini-theories are rarely considered explicitly, and few papers engage with SDT beyond descriptive accounts. We highlight conceptual gaps at the intersection of SDT and HCI games research, and identify opportunities for SDT propositions, concepts, and measures to more productively inform future work.

Statistical Signifcance Testing -or Null Hypothesis Signifcance Testing (NHST) -is common to quantitative CHI PLAY research. Drawing from recent work in HCI and psychology promoting transparent statistics and the reduction of questionable research practices, we systematically review the reporting quality of 119 CHI PLAY papers using NHST (data and analysis plan at OSF.io). We fnd that over half of these papers employ NHST without specifc statistical hypotheses or research questions, which may risk the proliferation of false positive fndings. Moreover, we observe inconsistencies in the reporting of sample sizes and statistical tests. These issues refect fundamental incompatibilities between NHST and the frequently exploratory work common to CHI PLAY. We discuss the complementary roles of exploratory and confrmatory research, and provide a template for more transparent research and reporting practices. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in HCI .

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