March 27, 2003
Assessment: Motivation Factors (Facets)
Indicate how much you agree with each statement with regards to the way you play your MMORPG. Make sure you complete every item on this questionnaire before you click submit. This assessment is drawn from data in the Facets study. On the results page, you will be able to download an Excel spreadsheet, plug in your results, and get a visual representation of your motivation factors (like the one shown on the right). There are 25 statements altogether.
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Click to download PDF's:
Vol. 1-1
Vol. 1-2
Vol. 1-3
Vol. 1-4
Vol. 1-5
Vol. 1-6
Vol. 1-7
Vol. 2-1
Vol. 2-2
Vol. 2-3
Vol. 2-4
Vol. 3-1
Vol. 3-2 (Motivations Issue)
Vol. 3-3
Vol. 3-4 (WoW Issue)
Vol. 3-5
Vol. 4-1
Vol. 4-2 (Guild Leadership Issue)
Vol. 4-3 (Role-Playing Issue)
Identity Projection
Players think of and relate to their avatars in very different ways. Some choose to identify and personify their avatar with their own personality, while others objectify their avatar and see it as a pawn in an abstracted playing field. As the following graph shows, female players are more likely to see their characters as idealized version of themselves, and age has a greater effect on male than on female players.
Players who see their characters as idealized versions of themselves do not spend more time playing the game, but they do indicate a greater willingness to stay with the game indefinitely than players who disagreed with that statement, probably due to personal and emotional investment in their characters.
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Players were also asked to indicate how much they agreed with the statement, “I think of my avatars as a part of an extension of me.” While there were no significant gender differences or age differences, there was a very clean positive correlation with hours played per week.
There was also a very clear positive correlation with indicated willingness to stay with the game indefinitely.
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Finally, respondents were asked to indicate their agreement with the statement, “I think of my avatars as just pawns in a game.”
In full complement with the two data sets presented above, there was a negative correlation with both hours played per week and projected willingness to stay with the game indefinitely.
Together, these three data sets show how identification with the avatar affects game play per week and projected willingness to stay with the game, probably as a function of personal and emotional investment. Perhaps agreement with identity projection statements could be thought of a measure for emotional and personal investment into the game.
Gaming with Romantic Partners and Family Members
On average, about 60% of female players (N = 312) and 16% of male players (N = 1592) play the game with a real-life romantic partner. The gender difference is expected and is a function of the ratio of men and women playing the game (about 5:1), although a small proportion may be attributed to same-sex romantic partners. Even so, knowing that up to 2/3’s of female players are not playing the game alone is important, because this probably influences their game-play patterns, and this has to be kept in mind when trying to explain gender differences in in-game data. The following graph plots the percentage of players who play with a RL romantic partner across gender and age groups.
And the following graph shows how frequently the respondents grouped with their romantic partner.
Respondents who played with a romantic partner were not more likely to spend more time playing the game, but they were more likely to indicate a greater willingness to stay with the game when compared with players who do not play the game with a romantic partner. When asked how long they projected themselves to continue playing the game, about 50% of players who play with romantic partners (N = 447) indicated they would continue playing the game indefinitely, while only 32% of players who do not play with a romantic partner (N = 1464) chose that option.
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The same questions were asked with regards to playing the game with a family member. In this case, an average of about 40% of female players and 35% of male players indicated that they play the game with a family member. The following graph plots the percentage against the gender and age groups.
And the following graph shows how frequently the respondents grouped with their family members.
Respondents who play the game with a family member were not more likely to spend more time playing the game, and they were also not more likely to indicate a greater willingness to stay with the game when compared with respondents who do not play the game with a family member.