Opening the Black Box of Team Performance With Open-Source Games: A Review and Recommendations

Many important indicators of the inputs, mediators, and outcomes of team performance have remained stubbornly resistant to sustained and detailed measurement. Team-based video games, now played by untold millions of people worldwide, offer the potential to provide data to support the analysis of these and other team-centered phenomena; however, theoretically grounded guidance is needed to guide game selection and modification to support such analysis. Accordingly, this article explores prospects and challenges for using currently available open video games (that is, ones which are free, open source, and open architecture) to improve understanding of team performance. The approach combines systematic classification, structured critique, and close analysis to identify games with strong potential for explorations of teamwork by human or mixed human-agent teams. This article concludes with a discussion of promising trajectories for future research.