Paper Number
ICIS2025-1663
Paper Type
Complete
Abstract
Conducting Information Systems (IS) research with proprietary data presents significant challenges due to privacy concerns, regulatory restrictions, and competitive considerations, making companies reluctant to share their data. This reluctance is amplified by data-sharing barriers within the research community. We explore the use of competitive online games as an alternative data source, offering large-scale publicly available data that captures human behavior in a naturalistic setting. We provide a theoretical foundation for competitive game data and systematically review literature from IS and related disciplines, analyzing 61 publications. Our synthesis highlights the fields utilizing this data, structures the research topics explored, and details the types of data employed. Building on this foundation, we propose a research agenda and argue that competitive game data can serve as a rich, accessible testbed for advancing IS research and inspiring future work linking behavioral data to socio-technical questions.
Recommended Citation
Elbert, Nico; Stein, Nikolai; and Flath, Christoph, "Beyond Play: Competitive Game Data as an Empirical Resource for IS Research" (2025). ICIS 2025 Proceedings. 16.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2025/hti/hti/16
Beyond Play: Competitive Game Data as an Empirical Resource for IS Research
Conducting Information Systems (IS) research with proprietary data presents significant challenges due to privacy concerns, regulatory restrictions, and competitive considerations, making companies reluctant to share their data. This reluctance is amplified by data-sharing barriers within the research community. We explore the use of competitive online games as an alternative data source, offering large-scale publicly available data that captures human behavior in a naturalistic setting. We provide a theoretical foundation for competitive game data and systematically review literature from IS and related disciplines, analyzing 61 publications. Our synthesis highlights the fields utilizing this data, structures the research topics explored, and details the types of data employed. Building on this foundation, we propose a research agenda and argue that competitive game data can serve as a rich, accessible testbed for advancing IS research and inspiring future work linking behavioral data to socio-technical questions.
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