Designing a Video Game to Measure Creativity

Creativity is a central phenomenon in human life. World-famous scientists and artists are praised for their creative genius. Schools and universities seek to educate creativity in students and many employers want to hire creative personnel. However, the measurement of creativity is difficult up to the present day. Standard creativity tests typically require human expertise in the evaluation of test responses. This evaluation is often more time-intensive than taking the test itself. Moreover, creativity tests are still regularly conducted in a pen-and-paper format, rendering the data analysis all the more tedious. In this article, we propose a digital game for assessing creativity. It can be hosted online. The data analysis can be automated and conducted in real-time. The test is implemented as a tower defense game ("Immune Defense"). We submit that a video game constitutes a natural setting, as opposed to a formal testing scenario, and provides an opportunity to test real-life creativity. We use the game event data gathered during each round of the game to determine a player's creativity score. A study with 17 participants was performed to compare game-based creativity scores to scores obtained with a standard creativity test, the Alternative Uses Task. Our preliminary data validate the proposed approach.