I would like to offer participants of a virtual environment experiment the opportunity to rate their skills in first-person navigation based upon their experience with first-person games so that I may distinguish them from participants who may not have a great degree of experience (navigating through a desktop virtual environment using the keyboard and mouse).
A self-assessment of first-person game proficiency by definition will not assess proficiency - rather, it will assess perception of proficiency. And unfortunately, there is extensive evidence that people do not self-assess skills very accurately (game-related or otherwise). Some researchers have taken the approach of asking about game experience instead - for example, asking single-item measures like, "how many hours per week do you play?" However, this is still a proxy for what you actually want to know. There is also the problem of "game" proficiency being a multidimensional concept - do you want to know if they are proficient at navigating the 3D environment, proficient at following game-related instructions, proficient at aiming and firing virtual weaponry, something else? The ideal approach would be to choose which skill dimensions are you interested and then actually test them, e.g. by asking participants to play a 5-minute game with an objective scoring system.
While Richard is absolutely right about self-assessment of proficiency, you might consider administering a self-efficacy instrument focused on specific tasks that they would need to perform to accomplish game objectives. Self-efficacy instruments have consistently been found to be highly reliable self-assessments.
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