Mmorpg Demographics, Motivations and Experiences 1 Running Head: Mmorpg Demographics, Motivations, and Experiences the Demographics, Motivations and Derived Experiences of Users of Massively Multi-user Online Graphical Environments

Online survey data were collected from 30,000 users of Massively Multi-User Online RolePlaying Games (MMORPGs) over a three year period to explore users’ demographics, motivations and derived experiences. Not only do MMORPGs appeal to a broad age range (Mage= 26.57, range = 11-68), but the appeal is strong (on average 22 hours of usage per week) across users of all ages (r = -.04). An exploratory factor analysis revealed a five factor model of user motivations Achievement, Relationship, Immersion, Escapism and Manipulation illustrating the multi-faceted appeal of these online environments. Men were significantly more likely to be driven by the Achievement and Manipulation factors, while women were significantly more likely to be driven by the Relationship factor. Also, the data indicated that users derived meaningful relationships, salient emotional experiences as well as real-life leadership skills from these virtual environments. MMORPGs are not simply a pastime for teenagers, but a valuable research venue and platform where millions of users interact and collaborate using real-time 3D avatars on a daily basis. MMORPG Demographics, Motivations and Experiences 3 The Demographics, Motivations and Derived Experiences of Users of Massively Multi-User Online Graphical Environments Selling virtual weaponry and real estate for a living, coordinating fifty people in a dragon-slaying expedition over a period of 5 hours, marrying someone you’ll never meet, and switching gender for several hours at a time. These are a few of the myriad of virtual phenomena that occur every day in online digital constructs known as MMORPGs Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games. Everyday, millions of users (Woodcock, 2004) participate in these online environments. The increasing prevalence of these environments makes it crucial to understand the ways in which we use, interact and live in these digital constructs. Although many of the theoretical implications of social interaction in Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVE) have been explored in the artificial confines of Virtual Reality (VR) research laboratories (Zhang & Furnas, 2002; Bailenson, Beall, & Blascovich, 2002; Slater, Sadagic, Usoh, & Schroeder, 2000; Normand, et al., 1999; Leigh, DeFanti, Johnson, Brown, & Sandin, 1997; Mania & Chalmers, 1998), MMORPGs provide a naturalistic setting where millions of users voluntarily immerse themselves in a graphical virtual environment and interact with each other through avatars (visual representations of users in a digital environment) on a daily basis. The opportunity to study what people actually do when they choose to be in a virtual environment with thousands of other people cannot be overstated, and that is the underlying rationale for the current studies. Existing research on computer or video gaming tends to focus on two main areas: the negative effects of playing video games and whether video games can be used for pedagogical purposes. For example, an extensive line of research has focused on demonstrating that violent MMORPG Demographics, Motivations and Experiences 4 video-games increase real-life aggression (Ballard & Lineberger, 1999; Anderson & Dill, 2000; Anderson & Bushman, 2001), and survey studies have shown positive correlations between preference for video games and aggressiveness (Scott, 1995; Funk et al., 2002), delinquency (Anderson & Dill, 2000), and lower perceived self-conduct (Funk, Buchman & Germann, 2000); however, the generalizability of short-term measures of aggression in experimental studies and the inability to infer causality in survey studies is a concern in this line of research (Griffiths, 1999). Another line of research has explored the pedagogical uses of video games among elementary school students (Ko, 2002), high-school students (Ravenscroft & Matheson, 2002), and college students (Moreno & Mayer, 2002). Video games can also enhance sensorimotor tasks (Fery & Ponserre, 2001), visual acuity and attention (Green & Bavelier, 2003), as well as aid in the recovery of motor skills after physical trauma (Taylor & Berry, 1998). What are MMORPGs? Both lines of above research have mostly relied on single-player games, but as the ubiquity of high-speed internet connections and powerful computer processors have increased with a steady decrease in cost, the paradigm of computer gaming has changed dramatically, and MMORPGs are the vanguard of a new generation of computer games that takes advantage of the accessibility of the internet and the graphical processing capability of standard computer systems. MMORPGs are a new paradigm in computer gaming (see Table 1). By definition, MMORPG users are part of a persistent world of up to 2000 other concurrent users (Sony Online, 2003). A persistent world is a world that exists independent of the users. In stand-alone MMORPG Demographics, Motivations and Experiences 5 games and local network games, the world only exists when the game is started by the user, and thus is dependent on the user “activating” it. In an MMORPG, the world exists before the user logs on, and continues to exist when the user logs off. More importantly, events and interactions occur in the world (driven by other users) even when the user is not logged on to the persistent world. To accommodate the sheer number of users, the worlds in MMORPGs are vast and varied (in terms of terrain, flora, fauna, and local inhabitants). In contrast, the worlds of most standalone and local network games are simplistic and can only accommodate fewer than 16 concurrent players in a space that can be traversed in a few minutes. Table 1 Attributes of 3 Gaming Paradigms Attribute Stand Alone Games Local and Wide Area Network Games MMORPGs Exemplars Solitaire, Snood, SimCity, Risk Diablo II, Unreal, Age of Empires EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies Cost for Player Software Software Software + Subscription # of Players in World 1 1-16 0-2000 Persistent World No No Yes Mode of User Agency Direct / God-Like Control One or Several Avatars Personal Avatar Size/Scope of World Abstracted Game Board Abstracted or Limited Worlds Naturalistic Worlds / Galaxies, not abstracted Player Social Interaction None Combat Strategy Driven Rich, collaborative, social interactions On a simplistic level, MMORPGs could be thought of as a scenic chat room with a MMORPG Demographics, Motivations and Experiences 6 variety of interactive tasks. Users experience cities, jungles, and even the falling rain or snow in rich real-time 3D graphics, and communicate with each other using typed chat and templated gestures and expressions. They interact with the world through a combination of mouse-driven interfaces and typed commands, and partake of a large number of varied activities that increase in complexity, reward and time involvement which typically operate on a random-ratio reinforcement schedule. These activities revolve around character advancement and translate into a functional advantage in terms of the mechanics of the world, whether this is combat capability, social status, avatar appearance, geographic knowledge, equipment quality or even cooking skills. Whereas the first few MMORPGs focused heavily on combat-oriented advancement, recent MMORPGs have offered more diverse forms of advancement. For example, in Star Wars Galaxies, one can become a skilled musician, chef, hair stylist, animal tamer, or politician. Most forms of advancement in MMORPGs require increasing cooperation or dependency on other users, oftentimes mutually beneficial. In Star Wars Galaxies, scouts hunt and harvest hides and meat from animals which they can sell to artisans who need those resources to craft basic items. Most combat professions need the complementary support of each other as they tackle more and more difficult creatures or enemies that in turn hold larger rewards. But ultimately, each user decides which form of advancement they will pursue, and the richness and complexity of the environment eliminates the need for super-ordinate goals or storylines. Every user is motivated by a different combination of the possible rewards. The result is that adventures, stories, and most importantly for the purpose of the current work, meaningful relationships between users emerge during interaction. Functional constructs within the environment facilitate these social networks – combat groups (temporary collaboration between a few users), guilds (persistent user-created membership organizations), and ideological alliances MMORPG Demographics, Motivations and Experiences 7 (agreements between guilds or “racial” groups). Given how different MMORPGs are from stand-alone and local network games, perhaps a better comparison is with live-action or table-top role-playing games (RPGs) or Multi-User Domains (MUDs) the textual predecessors of MMORPGs. MMORPGs are different from RPGS in that RPGs do not occur in persistent game worlds. Events only occur in the RPG game world when players have convened in a physical location. Also, this physical constraint means that it is not possible to convincingly change one’s representation in an RPG the way it is possible in an MMORPG especially in terms of gender and race. Furthermore, the physical constraints of RPGs makes it more likely that RPG players know each other when compared with MMORPG players. MMORPGs are in fact much more similar to MUDs than other genres of video games in that both have persistent game worlds where players can interact using avatars. Currently, there is very little quantitative research on MMORPGs or MUDs. While both Turkle (1995) and Bruckman (1993, 1995) contributed a great deal to our understanding of the users of MUDs, their approaches were more qualitative and relied on anecdotal stories, interview data, or personal experience. For example, Turkle (1995) illustrated how digital selfrepresentation in MUDs allowed users to understand the fluid, dynamic and post-modern nature of their identities. Almost no quantitative studies of MUDs exist. One of the few quantitative studies of MUDs explored how sociability and skepticism towards computer-mediated communication influenced social behavior within MUDs (Utz, 2000). Also worth noting is a multi-methods study of LambdaMOO by Schiano & White (1998) that illustrated, among other things, that LambdaMOO users preferred stable, integrated identities as opposed to the fluid, fragmented identities Turkle suggested. Existing research on MMORPGs has mostly relied on analysis of publicly available data. For example, Castronova (2002) has used the e-Bay sales MMORPG Demographics, Motivations and Experiences 8 transactions of virtual items to show that the economy of EverQuest is quantifiable and has a higher gross domestic product than some developing countries, and to show the inequity between the value of the virtual male and female body (Castronova, 2003). Griffiths, Davies & Chappell (2003) has also aggregated online poll data at websites catering to EverQuest players to provide the basic demographics and preferences of EverQuest players. Very few studies have used primary sources of data. One of the few is a study by Axelsson & Regan (2002) that explored the impact of group affiliation on social behavior in the MMORPG Asheron’s Call. The study found that group affiliation makes people more social both online and offline. Over the course of three years, I have collected online survey data from 30,000 MMORPG players. Preliminary qualitative data from open-ended questions were used to form theoretical questions about the motivations and relationship formation of MMORPG users among other issues (Yee, 2004). In that previous paper, I argued that the architecture of these environments facilitate relationship formation, and are windows into and catalysts in existing relationships in the material world. The goal of the current work was to complement these previous findings by providing a more rigorous quantitative analysis on who uses MMORPGs, what motivates their use, and the salience and impact of the experiences that emerge in these environments. Moreover, this paper attempts to articulate the many opportunities to study social identity, social interaction and relationship formation in these environments. Demographics and Usage The apparent focus of existing video game research on adolescent users creates the illusion that video game players are a youth subculture, and that video games are a teenage pastime of no important consequence apart from their ability to increase real-life aggression. For example, the entire volume of a recent special issue of the Journal of Adolescence (Vol. 21-1) MMORPG Demographics, Motivations and Experiences 9 was devoted to the negative effects of video games on adolescent gamers. The following quotes from that issue illustrate the assumption that adolescents are the primary consumers of video games or that video games somehow impact adults in an entirely different way that isn’t worth mentioning or studying. “Video games have become one of the favorite activities of American children” (pg. 5). “The rise and popularity of video and computer games as a leisure phenomenon has become an ever-increasing part of many young people's day-to-day lives” (pg. 1). “A lot of youths are playing violent video games for many hours per week. When large numbers of youths (including young adults) are exposed to many hours of media violence (including violent video games), even a small effect can have extremely large societal consequences” (pg. 120). In spite of the fact that the average age of computer and video game players is 30 (Entertainment Software Association, 2005), the articles in the special issue seem to perpetuate the assumption that mainly children and adolescents play video games. In fact, studies in video game violence in general have mainly focused on adolescent gamers (see Griffiths, 1999 for review). This stereotype is also described by other researchers. For example, Griffiths, Davies and Chappell (2003) note that “the image of a typical gamer is seen as socially negative and remains firmly within a youth subculture” (pg. 81). In a recent study that challenged this stereotype (Griffiths, Davies & Chappell, 2003), the demographics and usage patterns of MMORPG users were explored by analyzing online poll data on 2 websites catering to players of the MMORPG EverQuest. That data showed that the game clientele was very much an adult profile rather than the stereotypical adolescent player. Although the online polls consisted of large samples (upwards of 10,000 responses), a weakness MMORPG Demographics, Motivations and Experiences 10 with the study is that the data analysis was bound by the range and number of answer choices used in the third-party polls. For example, instead of allowing open-ended responses to age or hours played per week, only several ranges were offered. Furthermore, because each question was asked on a separate poll, it was not possible to explore demographics and preferences in relation to each other for each individual user – such as exploring age and gender differences in usage patterns. Therefore, it was crucial to perform a more extensive analysis of the demographics and usage patterns of MMORPG users. Motivations for Use Articulating motivational differences among different users is the precursor to understanding the emergence of more complex behaviors and interactions in these environments, as well as providing a framework to differentiate one user from another. To ignore these individual motivational differences is tantamount to claiming that all MMORPG users are motivated by the exact same reasons. Most video game studies to date, however, have relied on the traditional effects model that don’t take into account the fact that people choose the media they consume and the varied reasons for doing so (Sherry, 2001; Sherry & Lukas, 2003). Without an empirical framework with which to identify individual motivational differences among MMORPG users, it is impossible to meaningfully differentiate users or understand their interactions with other users in the world. This framework provides the foundation to explore whether different sections of the demographic are motivated differently, and whether certain motivations are more highly correlated with usage patterns or in-game preferences or behaviors. There have been no systematic attempts to create a motivational framework for MMORPG users, but an exploratory framework for Multi-User Dungeons (MUD) users has been MMORPG Demographics, Motivations and Experiences 11 proposed by Bartle (1996). Bartle’s proposed “player types” are derived from his experience in creating and managing these online textual worlds rather than empirical data, and provides valuable insight as well as a framework to test and build upon. Bartle proposed four types Achievers, Socializers, Explorers, and Killers each having different in-game preferences and motivations for using the MUD environment. For example, Explorers are users who are interested in understanding the mechanics and rules of the system as well as mapping out the world, while Socializers are users who enjoy chatting, interacting and role-playing with other users. Even though it is important to be able to differentiate the motivations among MMORPG users, there has been no empirical attempt to identify what those motivations might be. This present study attempted to create an empirical framework for understanding individual motivational differences among MMORPG users using an exploratory factor analysis. Also of interest was how these motivational differences varied across different demographic sections and how they correlated with usage patterns. Derived Experiences The impact that MMORPGs have on their users in terms of social interactions, emotional investment and acquisition of social skills will be collectively referred to as derived experiences in this paper. Even though there exists very little empirical research on MMORPGs, there are many reasons to expect that complex social interactions and social phenomena emerge in these environments. Indeed, the literature in MUDs is abundant with examples of how intimate relationships and emotionally salient experiences derive from even textual online environments. For example, Turkle (1995) has documented romantic relationships, supportive friendships, and even wedding ceremonies in MUDs. The incidence of a “cyber rape” in a MUD MMORPG Demographics, Motivations and Experiences 12 has also been documented and widely-discussed (Dibbell, 1993). The debate it sparked illustrated the amount of emotional investment users placed in these worlds. MMORPGs are MUDs on a massive scale with incredible visual and behavioral richness. Therefore, MMORPGs should foster complex social phenomena and interactions among users. The literature also suggests several reasons for why this might occur. For example, Walther (1996) suggested that one of the reasons why hyperpersonal interactions – interactions that are more intimate, more intense, more salient because of the communication channel – occur in CMC is because participants can reallocate cognitive resources typically used to maintain socially acceptable non-verbal gestures in face-to-face interactions and focus on the structure and content of the message itself. The message itself then comes across as more personal and articulate. Indeed, in virtual worlds where we do not have to constantly worry about how we look and behave, we would be able to dedicate more cognitive resources to the message itself. Walther also suggested that as interactants respond to personal messages with equally personal and intimate messages, the interactions intensify through reciprocity. In other words, the process provides a positive feedback cycle. Walther’s themes resonate with McKenna and Bargh’s more recent work (2000) suggesting four factors that enable positive social interactions online. First, people have greater anonymity online. Second, the importance of physical appearance is greatly reduced. Third, the Internet transcends the problems of physical space and wide dispersion. And finally, users have greater control over the time and pace of their interactions. Again, all of these factors, except for perhaps the last one, are present in MMORPGs, and suggest why enhanced social interactions occur in these online environments. Behavioral confirmation may also be at work. People become what we expect them to be MMORPG Demographics, Motivations and Experiences 13 (Snyder, Tanke & Berscheid, 1977). Given the literal reality of “knights in shining armor” and the fact that users can choose to be as attractive as the world allows, users may become more friendly and more sincere with each other because of the heroic attributes their avatars project. The present study used quantitative survey data to explore three issues that relate to the salience and impact of experiences and social interactions in MMORPGs. First of all, the significance and salience of the relationships that form in MMORPGs were examined. Secondly, the degree of emotional investment in the environment was considered. Finally, whether real-life leadership skills could be acquired in the online environment was explored through self-report measures. A series of online surveys were used to study the demographics, motivations and derived experiences among MMORPG users over a 3 year period, between the years 2000 and 2003. During this period, over 30,000 MMORPG users were surveyed, with approximately 2000-4000 respondents in each survey phase. In the following sections, the methods used and data collected on three main aspects of MMORPG use are presented. First, the demographic composition of current MMORPG users and their usage patterns are presented to illustrate the wide appeal of these immersive environments. Second, an exploratory factors analysis of the different motivators of usage is presented. Finally, the salience of the relationships and emotional experiences users derive from these environments is examined. General Methodology Certain methods were common to all three of the sections discussed in the previous paragraph. These common methodologies are presented here.