Who plays, how much, and why? Debunking the stereotypical gamer profile

Abstract

Online games have exploded in popularity, but for many researchers access to players has been difficult. The study reported here is the first to collect a combination of survey and behavioral data with the cooperation of a major virtual world operator. In the current study, 7,000 players of the massively multiplayer online game (MMO) EverQuest 2 were surveyed about their offline characteristics, their motivations and their physical and mental health. These self-report data were then combined with data on participants' actual in-game play behaviors, as collected by the game operator. Most of the results defy common stereotypes in surprising and interesting ways and have implications for communication theory and for future investigations of games.doi:10.1111/j. 1083-6101.2008.00428.x Who plays, how much, and why? A player census of a virtual world Americans, both young and old, play video games at an ever-growing rate. Today's adults, unlike those who dropped game play in the 1980s due to public shame (Williams, 2006a), play more than previous generations. 40% of adults are now regular players, compared to 83% of teenagers. The average player age is now 33, propelling the industry to $7.4 billion in U. S. sales in 2006 (Entertainment Software Association, 2007. The result is a population engaging in this medium as an acceptable mainstream activity. And as the Internet has become a larger part of everyday life (Wellman & Haythornthwaite, 2002), so too have networked games. 67% of teens now regularly play some game online (Rideout, Roberts, & Foehr, 2005). Online games bring people together as they use their cell phones, their computers and their gaming consoles to access not only games, but other people. The most social and high-profile of these spaces are persistent virtual worlds-games that are always on, in which players maintain a regular character who grows and changes, and in which many players participate in long-term social groups (Griffiths, Davies, & Chappell, 2003;Yee, 2006). These worlds, called ''massively multiplayer online games,'' or MMOs, are vibrant sites of community (Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006). Yet even as participation in them rises to several million players in North America alone, research on their players and their impact has remained relatively scant. Ethnographic and experimental investigations of player ''guilds'' and communities have explored the social dynamics and relationships that exist (Taylor, 2003(Taylor, , 2006Williams, Caplan, & Xiong, 2007), but systematic and generalizable research has remained elusive, largely due to the difficulties of securing access to players within the walled gardens of for-profit companies. The current investigation represents the first case of access to proprietary in-game player data. With the active cooperation of a major game operator, the current study surveyed players and unobtrusively collected in-game data on their behaviors. This combination of demographic, attitudinal and behavioral data generated a true player census of a virtual worl...

Social capital, coplaying patterns, and health disruptions: A survey of Massively Multiplayer Online Game participants in China

“…Female players constituted one quarter of our sample, which was consistent with past studies of similar games (Williams et al, 2008). The average age was 23.58 (SD = 4.29), and the average years of education was 14.90 (SD = 2.17), suggesting that the majority of the sample were either in college or college-educated young professionals.…”

“…The players in our sample were skewed toward the young, educated and affluent, which was consistent with gamer profiles in other countries (Williams et al, 2008). Our recruitment strategy, using a virtual weapon in CR3, could in theory have extracted a heterogeneous sample.…”

“…Numerous empirical studies debunked the stereotype that gamers tend to be isolated couch potatoes (Williams et al, 2008). In fact, online games today are enjoyable precisely because they are designed to engage players with other people-either their existing social ties or new ones (Cole & Griffiths, 2007).…”

“…MMOs are two-or three-dimensional persistent online spaces where participants could complete quests, coordinate joint actions, and advance their character, called ''avatars'' (Castronova, 2005;Ducheneaut, Yee, Nickell, & Moore, 2006;Williams, Yee, & Caplan, 2008). More important, all these activities can be, and sometimes must be, accomplished through social interactions with other players.…”

Demonstrating the validity of the Video Game Functional Assessment-Revised (VGFA-R)

“…However, Kuss and Griffiths (2012) summarized the potential motivations for video game players and found that based on previous research, the motivations to play included personal satisfaction, coping strategies, and socialization (Caplan, Williams, & Yee, 2009;Hussain & Griffiths, 2009;Williams, Yee, & Caplan, 2008). It should also be noted that the methodology utilized in previous studies to assess 'motivation' has not been derived from the work of Skinner (1954) or the field of applied behavior analysis.…”