vGameReviews: An R package for harnessing video game reviews for scientific research

Abstract

Researchers can harness feedback on video games in the form of online reviews and apply these datasets to investigate a wide range of disciplines including urban and landscape planning and science education. However, accessing online datasets requires advanced coding knowledge. Here, we introduce the vGameReviews R package which has been designed to allow users to access video game reviews easily. We also developed a shiny application, which provides users a graphical user interface option for searching for and saving these valuable datasets. The vGameReviews package increases the accessibility of Steam store data to a wide range of researchers.

Keywords

• Video games
• Game reviews
• Sustainability
• Urban planning
• Education