Editor’s note: In conjunction with his BOSS Academy Radio podcast, Paul Kirch, CEO of Actus Sales Intelligence, a Fort Worth, Texas, business and sales consulting agency, is interviewing authors, marketers and marketing researchers on a wide range of topics. By special arrangement, we’ll periodically feature edited recaps in the e-newsletter including portions of the conversations that touch on research-related topics.

As rapidly advancing technologies continue to alter the way we interact online, marketing researchers are challenged with the task of thinking outside of traditional survey designs to find ways to effectively engage consumers through online research. As a pioneer of research games, Betty Adamou, CEO and founder of the U.K.-based firm Research Through Gaming, is familiar with focusing on emerging and future technologies. Her work in game-based research combines traditional research methods and the immersive experience of gaming. Adamou asserts that research games are not just for the gaming community but rather a way to reach a wide variety of demographics.

In an interview with Paul Kirch for BOSS Academy Radio, Adamou discussed why playing games is considered to be an intrinsically motivating activity – a feature that allows game-based research to naturally attract and hold the attention of respondents, ultimately improving the quality of online research data and insights. 

Paul Kirch: Talk a little bit about your approach to gaming through research …

Betty Adamou: When we build a research game, it's to find out things that a traditional survey otherwise wouldn’t be able to do. There [are] a lot of situations that we place a participant in to watch what they do and how they react. Because of that, we're asking fewer questions. There is more setting up the narrative and a scenario in which we can give instruction and then we see what people do.

I had the opportunity to go t...