Game-based assessment vs traditional psychometric tests

By a traditional psychometric test (psikotes), we mean one of two kinds of test, or both:

• Self-report personality questionnaires. Candidates read statements such as "I enjoy meeting new people" and rate how well each one describes them.
• Ability tests with right answers. For example, number series, verbal analogies, abstract reasoning. Candidates work through items on paper or on a screen, often against a time limit.

Both are well understood, and the best of them have strong research behind them. The trouble starts when the stakes are high and the volume is large, which describes most Management Trainee and campus intakes.

The rows need some explaining.

Faking. A meta-analysis of 33 studies compared the personality scores of job applicants with those of people who weren't applying for anything. Applicants scored higher on four of the Big Five traits. The gaps were largest for conscientiousness and emotional stability. In some jobs, such as sales, applicants inflated the traits that looked most relevant to that job. Games remove the questions that make this possible. To be fair to the evidence, though, a 2022 systematic review of game-related assessments found only one study that had tested faking directly. Its result was positive, but the review says the claim still lacks scientific support.

Drop-out. There's little independent research comparing completion rates for games and questionnaires of the same length. One test publisher's data from hundreds of thousands of assessments suggests about 80% of candidates finish assessments up to 40 minutes long, with more drop-off beyond that. Whatever format you choose, keep it short and run it in a browser.

Speed. This is where the difference is largest in practice. When a national telecom group ran its Management Trainee intake on DEUS, more than 1,000 candidates in 30+ provinces were assessed at once, with results within a day.

Candidate experience. In one experiment, applicants who took a gamified situational judgment test reported more satisfaction with the process than those who took the text version of the same test. They also rated it fairer and found the company more attractive. The 2022 review found the same pattern across studies, though the gain was usually modest, and noted that negative reactions usually come from technical problems, not the assessment. Our own participants have told us it didn't feel like a psychotest at all.

Honesty helps here, because you'll be defending the choice to your own management.

• Track record. A 2022 re-analysis of the selection research still places cognitive ability tests among the top predictors of job performance, at a validity of .31. Game-based assessment doesn't have a body of evidence that size yet. The 2022 review found no evidence that game-related assessments predict performance better than other methods.
• Familiarity. Your in-house psychologists know how to read the results, and so do your hiring managers.
• Small numbers. For a handful of senior hires, the scoring time saved is small, and a well-run structured interview matters more. The same re-analysis ranked structured interviews first, at .42.

• Volume with little time. Invitations, reminders, progress tracking, scoring and reports all run on the platform, so an intake of a thousand doesn't need a bigger HR team.
• Less to rehearse. The games measure behavior, so there's little to look up.
• How people behave. The DEUS Neuroscience games show motivation, appetite for risk, effort allocation and emotion recognition through behavior people don't consciously control. Motivation in particular is easy to misjudge in a one-hour interview.
• Local norms. Every DEUS assessment is normed on the Indonesian population, so a percentile compares your candidate with Indonesians instead of a Western reference group.
• Your employer brand. Candidates come away seeing the company as modern and serious about talent.

Yes. The 2022 review found that game-related assessments seem to benefit from being used alongside conventional tests.

A practical split for a Management Trainee intake:

1. First pass: the DEUS Cognitive and Neuroscience games for the whole intake, with a cut-off score that flags candidates below it automatically.
2. Final round: the Simulation module, where finalists analyze a business case and allocate a budget against a live timer, in a scenario set in your industry.
3. Decision: a structured interview with the people still in the running.

If you want personality in the process without a self-rating questionnaire, DEUS Discover is one route. It's a situational judgment test delivered as a story, built on the Big Five, and its results can be framed around your own competency framework. Candidates choose what to do as the story unfolds, rather than rating themselves.

Don't replace your whole process in one go. Start with a free trial, or run a pilot with one division, one role or one batch. Running the games and your current test on the same pilot batch gives you a direct comparison, in your own company, before you commit. DEUS has no long-term contract: pay month to month or per batch, from IDR 69,000 per candidate.