Veli-Matti Karhulahti

University of Jyväskylä | JYU · Department of Contemporary Culture

Quantitatively coding open-ended data (e.g., from videos, interviews) can be a rich source of information in psychological research, but reporting practices vary substantially. We provide strategies for improving validity and reliability of coding open-ended data and investigate questionable research practices in this area. First, we systematically...

This is a commentary accepted for publication in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

For decades, research on technology use and mental health has been based on the assumption that identifiable structures of ‘design’ are psychologically relevant for their users. This has been central especially for the nosological emergence of ‘behavioural addictions’, which currently include two formal diagnoses on technology use: problems related...

In psychological science, replicability—repeating a study with a new sample achieving consistent results (Parsons et al., 2022)—is critical for affirming the validity of scientific findings. Despite its importance, replication efforts are few and far between in psychological science with many attempts failing to corroborate past findings. This scar...

The goal of this essay is to clarify positionality as an epistemological scientific concept and address related misunderstandings to help researchers assess whether statements thereof contribute to their work. Positionality statements can be useful for various research designs across scientific fields, when they are used knowingly.

The competitive play of digital games, esports, has attracted worldwide attention of hundreds of millions of young people. Although esports players are known to practice in similar ways to other athletes, it remains largely unknown what factors contribute to high performance and to what degree. In the present confirmatory study, our goal was to tes...

Background: Mental health professionals’ (MHPs) views on video games are crucial for game-based digital mental health interventions. These interventions are actively developed, their successful implementation depends also on clinician acceptability, and they are related to the divisive topics of technological transformation and video games. Objecti...

In psychological science, replicability—repeating a study with a new sampleachieving consistent results (Parsons et al., 2022)—is critical for affirming the validity of scientific findings. Despite its importance, replication efforts are few and far between in psychological science with many attempts failing to corroborate past findings. This scarc...

Background: Little prior research has been conducted on how mental health professionals (MHPs) view video games in the clinical context. The need for such contextual inquiry has recently emerged because game-based digital mental health interventions are actively developed and their successful implementation also depends on clinicians’ acceptance. M...

The goal of this essay is to clarify positionality as an epistemological scientific concept and address related misunderstandings to help researchers assess whether statements thereof contribute to their work.

This is a commentary on interdisciplinary value in the special issue "Responsible Research Assessment: Implementing DORA for hiring and promotion in psychology."

Replication is costly. Here we introduce the concept of “pre-replication” – a strategy to assess the scientific meaningfulness of a finding, based on its theoretical and practical value, before committing resources to replication. We propose that alongside replication studies, journals should consider publishing pre-replication reports to highlight...

Digital interventions often suffer from low usage, which may reflect insufficient attention to user experience. Moreover, the existing evaluation methods have limited applicability in the remote study of user experience of complex interventions that have expansive content and that are used over an extensive period of time. To alleviate these challe...

For decades, research on technology use and mental health has been based on the assumption that identifiable structures of ‘design’ are psychologically relevant for their users. This has been central especially for the nosological emergence of ‘behavioural addictions’, which currently involve two formal diagnoses involving technology: problems rela...

Journal editors have a large amount of power to advance open science in their respective fields by incentivising and mandating open policies and practices at their journals. The Data PASS Journal Editors Discussion Interface (JEDI, an online community for social science journal editors: www.dpjedi.org ) has collated several resources on embedding o...

With the accelerated growth of the sim racing industry over the last few years, research on the phenomenon has started to emerge. Nonetheless, the history of sim racing remains unmapped. This study aims to fill the gap by investigating the development in sim racing in Europe and in Asia-Pacific between 1997 and 2021. Twenty four semi-structured int...

This essay way delivered as a keynote lecture in the first onsite Esports Research Network Conference, which was organized under the theme “Sustainable Esports in the Digital Society” (Jönköping 21–23 November 2022). Some parts have been edited to improve readability and provide references.

Open-ended data are rich sources of information in psychological research, but reporting practices differ substantially. Here, we assess current reporting practices for quantitative coding of open-ended data, provide strategies for making it more valid and reliable, and investigate questionable research practices in this area. First, we systematica...

Despite increasing research attention given to problematic technology use, the perceptions of individuals who experience related issues remain largely unknown. In particular, qualitative insight into actual help-seekers’ experiences of problematic social media use, which currently holds a subdiagnostic status, is lacking. The present study responds...

Background Physical activity (PA) for adolescents is an important health promotion habit to develop, yet other activities may be more appealing during this stage in life. According to the displacement hypothesis, time on digital games takes away the opportunity to be physically active. As there is a notable decline in PA levels between the ages of...

Objective: From 2022, the International Classification of Diseases, eleventh edition (ICD-11) includes the first mental disorder based on digital technology, “gaming disorder,” which was previously suggested as a condition for further examination in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition (DSM-5). In this cross-sect...

Background Digital interventions are typically evaluated by their effectiveness and engagement, while the characteristics of patients who perceive them to be attractive have remained poorly understood. This challenges user-centered intervention development but also presents an avenue to improve intervention efficacy and engagement. Our objective wa...

Across sciences the lack of reproducibility has raised concerns that shake disciplinary foundations. In this article, the need for institutional solutions as one possible antidote to reproducibility issues is suggested, and Reproducibility Networks (RNs), as a case in point, are explained. In particular, we reflect on the establishment of the Finni...

Registered reports are a publication format that involves peer reviewing studies both before and after carrying out research procedures. Although registered reports were originally developed to combat challenges in quantitative and confirmatory study designs, today registered reports are also available for qualitative and exploratory work. This art...

Journal editors have a large amount of power to advance open science in their respective fields by incentivizing and mandating open policies and practices at their journals. The Data PASS Journal Editors Discussion Interface (JEDI, an online community for social science journal editors: www.dpjedi.org) has collated several resources on embedding op...

Työn aihe ja tarkoitus Valtaosa suomalaisista pelaa säännöllisesti erilaisia videopelejä, kuten konsoli-, mobiili- ja pöytäkonepelejä. Pelaamisen, terveyden ja työelämän väliset jännitteet ovat nousseet pinnalle etenkin Maailman terveysjärjestön (WHO) hiljattain käyttöön ottaman diagnoosin myötä: ongelmallisesta videopelaamisesta on voinut saada mi...

Despite gaming disorder now being diagnosable by the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) as a new mental disorder due to addictive behaviors, little is known about the concrete reasons for which people seek treatment for their videogame play. As the current literature is mainly based on children and adolescents, there is a strong need...

Journal editors have a large amount of power to advance open science in their respective fields by incentivising and mandating open policies and practices at their journals. The Data PASS Journal Editors Discussion Interface (JEDI, an online community for social science journal editors: www.dpjedi.org) has collated several resources on open science...

The academic debates regarding the psychiatric relevance of gaming disorder continue largely because the lived experiences of treatment-seekers remain mostly unstudied. This registered report addresses the above research gap with a longitudinal design that pursues a comparative descriptive understanding of how intensive gaming experiences evolve in...

Both game-based trolling and hooliganism have existed in some form since the inception of online gaming and professional sports respectively. The two share many characteristics: provocation of an opposing entity, the tendency to taunt or trash-talk others based on their social or individual identity, and disruptive and/or destructive behaviour. How...

Registered reports are a publication format that involves peer reviewing studies both before and after carrying out research procedures. Although registered reports were originally developed to combat challenges in quantitative and confirmatory study designs, today registered reports are also available for qualitative and exploratory work. This art...

Across sciences the lack of reproducibility has raised concerns that shake disciplinary foundations. In this article, the need for institutional solutions as one possible antidote to reproducibility issues is suggested, and Reproducibility Networks (RNs), as a case in point, are explained. In particular, we reflect on the establishment of the Finni...

This is a commentary on the following two studies, which serve as target articles in the Meta- Psychology special issue "Responsible Research Assessment: Implementing DORA for hiring and promotion in psychology.“a) Schönbrodt, F., Gärtner, A., Frank, M., Gollwitzer, M., Ihle, M., Mischkowski, D., ... & Leising, D. (2023). Responsible Research Asses...

The claw crane—an arcade game that invites its players to remotely grab a prize with a "claw"—has undergone a long process of development from an eye-catching "steam shovel" to a calculated gambling machine across amusement arcades, train stations, and traveling carnivals. Recently, the claw crane has become a common transmedia object in various co...

Registered reports are a publication format that involves peer reviewing studies both before and after carrying out research procedures. Although registered reports were originally developed to combat challenges in quantitative and confirmatory study designs, today registered reports are also available for qualitative and exploratory work. This art...

BACKGROUND Digital tools and interventions are being increasingly developed in response to the growing mental health crisis, and mental health professionals (MHPs) considerably influence their adoption in client practice. However, how MHPs use digital tools in client interaction is yet to be sufficiently understood, which poses challenges to their...

Background Digital tools and interventions are being increasingly developed in response to the growing mental health crisis, and mental health professionals (MHPs) considerably influence their adoption in client practice. However, how MHPs use digital tools in client interaction is yet to be sufficiently understood, which poses challenges to their...

The recent inclusion of gaming disorder in the ICD-11 as a mental disorder has further increased the importance of researching the health spectrum related to gaming. A critical area in this regard is the lack of clarity concerning the differences between gaming disorder and intensive play, the latter of which often involves several gaming hours per...

Gaming-related health problems have been researched since the 1980s with numerous different ontologies as reference systems, from self-assessed ‘game addiction’ to ‘pathological gambling’ (in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM]-IV), ‘internet gaming disorder’ (in the third section of the DSM-5) and most recently ‘gaming...

Qualitative data sharing practices in psychology have not developed as rapidly as those in parallel quantitative domains. This is often explained by numerous epistemological, ethical and pragmatic issues concerning qualitative data types. In this article, I provide an alternative to the frequently expressed, often reasonable, concerns regarding the...

This is Output O1 of the GAMEHIGHED project. It's a report on gamedev-oriented higher education in four countries, based on reciprocal study visits to Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz (Poland), Charles University in Prague (Czechia), University of Jyväskylä in Jyväskylä (Finland), and Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul (Turkey). It is an ove...

In this nonconfirmatory qualitative study, we pursued a range of hypotheses regarding how gaming operates in the lives and psychosocial wellbeing of those who actively play videogames during a crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Informed by an explorative survey (N = 793), interpretive phenomenological analysis was applied to interview d...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS. Despite gaming disorder now being diagnosable by the ICD-11 as a new disorder due to addictive behaviors, little is known about the concrete reasons for which people seek treatment for their videogame play. As the current literature is mainly based on children and adolescents, there is a strong need for better understanding adu...

Objective: The aim of the study was to examine the associations of sports video gaming behaviour in the sociological concept of Physical Activity Relationships (PAR) and to see if sports video gaming differs by gender. Methods: A convenience sample of children between 11–12 years of age (n = 114) from three Finnish regions completed a questionnaire...

Gaming-related health problems have been researched since the 1980s with numerous different “ontologies” as reference systems, from self-assessed “game addiction” to “pathological gam-bling” (in the DSM-IV), “internet gaming disorder” (in the 3rd section of the DSM-5) and most recently “gaming disorder” (in the ICD-11). Our goal was to investigate...

This article proposes the Hypository, a registration repository for sharing hypotheses resulting from unexpected findings, and hypotheses appearing to be so promising that researchers would like to publish them as soon as possible, whether they have the time and funding to study them or not. The goal of the Hypository is to enable researchers to ge...

This article introduces multiverse ethnography as a systematic team-based qualitative method for studying the mechanical, structural and experiential properties of video games and other technological artefacts. Instead of applying the ethnographic method to produce a single in-depth account, multiverse ethnography includes multiple researchers carr...

This Open Access book provides a comprehensive review of the rapidly developing esport phenomenon by examining one of its contemporary flagship titles, Overwatch (Blizzard Entertainment 2016), through three central themes and from a rich variety of research methods and perspectives. As a game with more than 40 million individual players, an annua...

We pursue Overwatch player profiles via a statistical cluster analysis of survey data from the UK ( N = 1089) and the USA ( N = 417). The profiles are based on the players’ activity, challenge, and experiential preferences as well as motivations. Our analytical process produces six esports player clusters, two of which with Overwatch. The first ( O...

Background: From 2022, the ICD-11 includes the first mental disorder based on digital technology, “gaming disorder”, which was previously suggested as a condition for further study in the DSM-5 (2013). In this study, we provide the first large-scale network analysis of various symptom structures for these constructs to understand the complex interc...

Researchers are disincentivized from conducting urgently needed qualitative research, argues Veli-Matti Karhulahti. He recommends the adoption of registered reports for qualitative research as a remedial course of action.

Background Open peer review practices are increasing in medicine and life sciences, but in social sciences and humanities (SSH) they are still rare. We aimed to map out how editors of respected SSH journals perceive open peer review, how they balance policy, ethics, and pragmatism in the review processes they oversee, and how they view their own po...

Numerous instruments have been developed to measure gaming-related health problems based on “internet gaming disorder” (IGD) in the third section of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.) and “gaming disorder” (GD) in the International Classification of Diseases (11th rev.). However, the criteria in the manuals tend to...

The recent inclusion of gaming disorder in the ICD-11 as a mental disorder has further increased the importance of researching the health spectrum related to gaming. A critical area in this regard is the lack of clarity concerning the differences between gaming disorder and intensive play, the latter of which often involves several gaming hours per...

Qualitative data sharing practices have not developed as rapidly as those in quantitative domains. This is often explained by numerous epistemological, ethical, and pragmatic issues that concern qualitative data types in particular. In this essay I provide an alternative to the frequently expressed (often reasonable) concerns regarding the sharing...

In this nonconfirmatory qualitative study, we pursued a range of possible answers regarding gaming’s role in coping with, managing, and surviving the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. With the help of an explorative survey (n=793), a gaming-based interview frame for interpretive phenomenological analysis on Chinese (n=10) and Finnish (...

Openings of research results, datasets, and scientific practices in general are currently being implemented across fields. Especially strongly data-driven areas like medicine are discussing publishing transparency too – in a context where open review formats now dominate. Social sciences and humanities (SSH), in turn, still rely on closed systems....

This article introduces multiverse ethnography as a systematic team-based qualitative method for studying the mechanical, structural, and experiential properties of videogames and other technological artifacts. Instead of applying the ethnographic method to produce a single in- depth account of the studied research object, multiverse ethnography in...

Openings of research results, datasets, and scientific practices in general are currently being implemented across fields. Especially strongly data-driven areas like medicine are discussing publishing transparency too – in a context where open review formats now dominate. Social sciences and humanities (SSH), in turn, still rely on closed systems....

By looking at videogame production through a two-vector model of design—a practice determined by the interplay between economic and technological evolution—we argue that shared screen play, as both collaboration and competition, originally functioned as a desirable pattern in videogame design, but has since become problematic due to industry transf...

In order to better understand the development of play and games in modern lives, this article examines two competitive leisure groups: digital fighting game players and traditional taekwondo practitioners. Drawing on qualitative offline/online interviews (n = 56) and close reading of externally documented life narratives (n = 14), we explore how th...

Fictosexuality, fictoromance, and fictophilia are terms that have recently become popular in online environments as indicators of strong and lasting feelings of love, infatuation, or desire for one or more fictional characters. This article explores the phenomenon by qualitative thematic analysis of 71 relevant online discussions. Five central them...

Since 2013 when the DSM-5 manual was published, numerous scholars around the world have developed new self-report instruments for measuring internet gaming disorder or later a gaming disorder. However, each of these instruments utilizes different operationalizations of its criteria, making the pursue for a unified gaming-related disorder measure di...

This article offers possibly the first peer-reviewed study on the training routines of elite e-athletes with special focus on the subjects' physical exercise routines. The study is based on a sample of 115 elite e-athletes. According to the responses, e-athletes train approximately 5.28 hours every day around the year on the elite level. Approximat...

This chapter is an extended revision of the authors' earlier study (2016) on the training routines of professional and high-level esport players, with added focus on their physical exercise. The study is methodologically mixed with a quantitative survey sample (n=115) and a qualitative interview sample (n=7). Based on this data, high-level esport p...

This is a response to a recently published letter by Griffiths (2020) in Asian Journal of Psychiatry. The response was submitted to the same journal on April 26, 2020. It was rejected two days later as not suitable for the journal.

This study evaluated five early cases in which esport developer Riot Games made rulings regarding activities and infractions by members of various institutions related to its product, League of Legends. The findings of this study support future theoretical exploration of other esports in seeking a fuller understanding of issues related to consent,...

Challenge is a key motivation for videogame play. But what kind of challenge types videogames include, and which of them players prefer? This article answers the above questions by developing and validating Videogame Challenge Inventory (CHA), a psychometrically sound measurement for investigating players’ challenge preferences in videogames. Based...

This article discusses the ‘computer game’ as a pragmatic concept. A dual nature of the computer game as both a pragmatic idea and a pragmatic meaning is introduced. Practical meanings of the computer game correspond with the concrete effects that engaging with computer games produces in an individual. Practical ideas of the computer game correspon...

This article provides an analysis of the “dating app” Tinder as an aesthetic ludic artifact. By scrutinizing the title’s features of gameplay and expressive–interpretive social interaction, Tinder usage is set into a frame theory context and shown to operate by multiple overlapping frames that allow romantic engagement to be entered as play and vic...

We bring attention to a notable unreported “gaming addiction” or “problem gaming” prevalence data set that adds significantly to both the DSM-5′s call for further Internet Gaming Disorder research as well as many other scientific encouragements for more wide-ranging reports on the topic. Keywords: Gaming disorder, Internet gaming disorder, Prevalen...

This article is an extended revision of the authors' earlier study (2016) on the training routines of professional and high-level esport players, with added focus on their physical exercise. The study is methodologically mixed with a quantitative survey sample (n=115) and a qualitative interview sample (n=7). Based on this data, high-level esport p...

In this paper, we provide a new perspective on esports as gamified play by mapping out the means of their ludic customization with a reflection on ethics. We start by systematizing purchasable customizations in esport games by their effects: cosmetic in-game purchases, functional in-game purchases, and out-game purchases. Subsequently, we situate p...

Whether or not gaming causes addiction continues to be debated in the scholarly literature. The American Psychiatric Association has proposed "Internet gaming disorder," a non-substance addictive disorder, in order to encourage further research on the subject. We suggest that competitive gaming, better known as esports, might provide a unique platf...

Tausta: Videopelien kilpailullinen pelaaminen – e-urheilu (eSports) – on noussut viime vuosien aikana merkittäväksi osaksi urheilukulttuuriamme. Laji kerää kasvavissa määrin katsojia niin paikan päälle kuin TV:n ja eri verkkomedioiden ääreen. Esimerkiksi vuonna 2016 The League of Legends -pelin finaalilla oli 43 miljoonaa katsojaa (Riot Games, 2016...

This article offers possibly the first peer-reviewed study on the training routines of elite eathletes, with special focus on the subjects’ physical exercise routines. The study is based on a sample of 115 elite e-athletes. According to their responses, e-athletes train approximately 5.28 hours every day around the year on the elite level. Approxim...

This article examines the functions of prank performance and troll performance for the aesthetics of personal live-streaming, i.e. the practice of live-streaming one's personal performance via platforms such as Twitch.tv. The study is based on a close analysis of personal esport live-streamer Ali Larsen, aka Gross Gore, via a 12-month observation p...

Simulation. The concept of simulation has been contested in academia since its proliferation in the 1960s. This is hardly the case in videogame research, the subject of which is commonly discussed as a simulation or something that simulates with little analytical consideration of the term’s other scientific roles. Comparison. The article compares t...

This article presents an ontological theory of the narrative work in order to identify the storygame (videogame with high narrativity) as a postclassical narrative phenomenon. The theory is demand-based, meaning that it perceives narrative works through the demands they set for their progression, progression demands. In the postulated ontological t...

This article introduces the concept of ludocriticism as a practice for evaluating videogame artifacts. It is not so much concerned with understanding the product, but rather with whether the product is worth understanding. The primary method of this practice is hermeneutics. http://gamescriticism.org/

Within the last few decades, the videogame has become an important media, economic, and cultural phenomenon. Along with the phenomenon’s proliferation the aspects that constitute its identity have become more and more challenging to determine, however. The persistent surfacing of novel ludic forms continues to expand the conceptual range of ‘games’...

Skepticus: One more thing, Grasshopper! Grasshopper: Yes? S: Could you summarize our dialogue in 350 words? G: I'm sorry, Skepticus, but I don't think I understand. Why would you want to do something like that? S: Well, I just recalled that the article requires an abstract of 350 words, and I know you are good with small talk. G: Oh my. You must be...

In this article we present the hermeneutic method as a tool for analyzing game studies discourses. We use Markku Eskelinen's profusely interpreted "The Gaming Situation" (2001) as a case study. Our premise is that whereas the hermeneutic method is academically well-established, its conscious application is not. It is suggested that with conscious a...

This paper surveys the ontological and aesthetic character of puzzles in worlds with storytelling potential, storiable worlds (potential storyworlds). These puzzles are termed fiction puzzles. The focus is on the fiction puzzles of videogames, which are accommodated to John Dewey's pragmatist framework of aesthetics to be examined as art products c...

This article establishes the evident but mostly unexplored difference between kinesthetic and nonkinesthetic videogame challenges. The difference is refined into a challenge-based theory for understanding the videogame and its peculiar rhetorical character. The premise is that videogame play, gaming, is either a kinesthetic or nonkinesthetic activi...