The simple game, developed at Princeton University featured red dots that moved and swarmed in different ways against a translucent screen.
When they projected the game into a fish tank, researchers found that the predatory bluegill sunfish were less likely to try to attack the dots when they moved in a group formation.
"By creating an immersive video game for the fish we were able to have complete control over the parameters," senior researcher Dr Iain Couzin from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University told BBC News.
"Trying to do this experiment with natural grouping prey items, it would have been impossible to understand or control what was going on," Couzin said.
The size and colour of the simple prey graphics were carefully designed.
He said it was important that the game had been coded so that the movement of the dots did not become predictable.
"In any computer game if you have one type of enemy it's easy to learn. It would be fascinating to understand whether the fish learned to play the game better over time," said Couzin.
The team is now looking at using 3-D technology to create a more photorealistic world in which to study fish behaviour.
"We're developing an automating tracking system so we can track the position of their eyes and reconstruct a virtual world of prey items, using conventional projectors. It will be a fully 3-D virtual world to these organisms," said Couzin.
The research was published in the Science journal.
