Newell (1973) predicted that experimental psychology’s focus on falsifying theories of individual phenomena would not lead to a unifying theory subsuming several phenomena. Instead of seeking to detect effects, Newell argued psychologists should build predictive theories of behavior by modeling 1) the structure of the task environment (i.e., context), 2) the subjects’ own goals, and 3) the invariant structure of the subjects’ processing mechanisms. We explore how video games may serve as the complex behavioral paradigm that Newell sought, which is necessary to study in order to make progress towards a unified theory of cognition.