Players Who Have Quit

Players who have quit are by definition difficult to target, because they are far less likely to go to MMORPG portals when they are no longer playing the game. Because I maintain a database of respondents to facilitate analyzing across survey phases by matching a respondent’s email address, I found myself in a position to target players who were in my database but who had quit the game since they first participated in my surveys. Of course, the following data is by no means representative of all players who have quit, but it is a first step in understanding players who quit and why they quit.

418 respondents completed the “exit survey”, of which 51% are not currently playing any MMORPG.

Respondents were asked to indicate how long they played the game before they quit, as well as how long they kept their account active for after they stopped playing. Because of the large variance of this variable (0 to 60), it was difficult to do significance testing on age and gender differences.

Even with a non-representative sampling, we can still find valid subgroup differences. For example, even with a non-representative sampling of the general population – 4 times the number of women versus men, we will still probably find that the men in this sample weigh more than the women. This is true as long as there are no systematic biases that affected these subgroups. Thus, the age and differences below are likely to be true even though the overall sampling is probably skewed.

There were significant age and gender differences with regards to whether these respondents were currently playing an MMORPG. Overall, 48.5% of these respondents were currently playing an MMORPG. Female players were more likely to be currently playing an MMORPG than male players (68% as opposed to 45%). Furthermore, older players were more likely to be currently playing an MMORPG when compared with younger players.

Respondents were also asked whether they gave away their character’s items when they left the game. Overall, 60% of respondents did not give away their items, 29% gave them away to friends, and 10% gave them away to strangers. There were no significant gender differences, but players under 23 were more likely to give away their items than players above 22 (50% as opposed to 35%).