behaviorgames

Description

History

I created behaviorgames.com back in the summer of 2006, when I joined the Psychology Department of Wabash College. I have a PhD in Neuroscience, and most of my training and research has been in the the brain systems that allow us to learn new information and skills. My main research is in the area of learning and memory, and I spent much of my twenties training rats to run through mazes (and study how neural activity in the basal ganglia correlated with maze learning). But, after finishing my PhD, I became interested in using video games to study how people learn new behaviors (like finding your way through a maze). I started with GameMaker, and moved on to the Torque Game Engine, and finally Unity to make a set of games that allowed me to study how people learned to solve very simple mazes. These research games were very useful (as research projects), but they made for boring games.

Today, I'm working on developing games that are more entertaining, but also useful for research. My first attempt was a 2.5D side-scroller (Escape from Zargnon) which was released in November 2011, and my second game (Colonize) was released in late 2012. My next game, made with my colleague Veronique Bohbot, will be released on Android and iOS in the summer of 2013..

Projects

• Taxi Dash
• Colonize