Player-driven research on behaviour and motivations in MMORPG's

[Deleted]

Hello,

The following survey is part of a research project examining motivations and behaviour in MMORPG's.

The project utilizes player experience and observations to create new unique survey questions, revealing concepts that have not yet been uncovered. This project is run by 3 PhD survey researchers at an academic institution who have all played WoW for over 7 years.

The survey will ask some questions about your thoughts and feelings when playing WoW, some questions about
your interaction with other players, and also some questions about who you are.

Completing the survey will take 5-10 minutes.

Link: https://lse.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_0ppguyuiu09ZU8d

If you have any comments or feedback, members of the project will be monitoring this thread!


Thank you for your participation!

[anveena]

filled one out for ya

[v2prwsmb45yhuq3wj23vpjk]

Started answering, got to the Agree/Disagree question, stopped answering because of the way the questions were phrased. Your questions are negatively leading, which will present a strong bias in your research.

[Deleted]

My favourite part was this one:

"I sometimes stay on my character without doing anything else than jumping around or running in circles."

Done. I hope it helps.

[Spectral]

Started answering, got to the Agree/Disagree question, stopped answering because of the way the questions were phrased. Your questions are negatively leading, which will present a strong bias in your research.

They might generate negative leading for some and positive leading for others. I haven't read it yet, I'm going to after I go get some noms.

[anveena]

My favourite part was this one:

"I sometimes stay on my character without doing anything else than jumping around or running in circles."

Done. I hope it helps.

I did far too much of this during TBC in Shat.

[Deleted]

I did far too much of this during TBC in Shat.

I did it all the time, especially when raiding. That and spamming water shield.

[Decagon]

Hooray for surveys!

[mistuhbull]

did it.

/rant
Some of your questions lead to certain answers. I'm not sure there is a person out there who can honestly say their life is "excellent". Also, the sheer number of "studies" that university students are doing on MMOs is getting to become annoying to me as a person.
/endrant

[Mojibake]

I did it, though I do question the phrasing on some questions. However, questions are often subjective things. When I came to a question that I thought was a bit off, I simply said I was indifferent (neither agree nor disagree).

[TheBeardedOne]

did it.

/rant
Some of your questions lead to certain answers. I'm not sure there is a person out there who can honestly say their life is "excellent". Also, the sheer number of "studies" that university students are doing on MMOs is getting to become annoying to me as a person.
/endrant

yet you still clicked on the links to get to it and do it, my mind is blown

[Aceda]

I don't understand the increasing number of "studies" that come floating around MMO players. The majority of people that have their life affected from video games in general is so small that I can't see any reason for them in the first place. Pick another topic and genre of people to help.

I only hope you're not governmently funded.

[DeltrusDisc]

Great survey, I mostly just changed WoW to Rift, since I don't play WoW anymore, but I referenced it for a few questions. (I've had more bad experiences in WoW than Rift, whether it is because of bigger player-base, less mature, no one will ever know.)

---------- Post added 2012-11-13 at 06:13 AM ----------

I don't understand the increasing number of "studies" that come floating around MMO players. The majority of people that have their life affected from video games in general is so small that I can't see any reason for them in the first place. Pick another topic and genre of people to help.

I only hope you're not governmently funded.

You don't? Gaming has been getting bigger and bigger the past few decades, it's gone from a fad to a cultural phenomenon, with WoW being one of the most culturally recognized....

[Aceda]

You don't? Gaming has been getting bigger and bigger the past few decades, it's gone from a fad to a cultural phenomenon, with WoW being one of the most culturally recognized....

Yes, yes, gaming is super cool mainstream now. That part's easy to understand. What puzzles me is why people feel the need to study people who play video games like it's some sort of disease. The majority "gamers" are facebook, smartphone, and tablet users anyway. Followed by MMO players. These people hold jobs, pay bills, go to school, and live fairly regular lives.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

Yes, yes, gaming is super cool mainstream now. That part's easy to understand. What puzzles me is why people feel the need to study people who play video games like it's some sort of disease. The majority "gamers" are facebook, smartphone, and tablet users anyway. Followed by MMO players. These people hold jobs, pay bills, go to school, and live fairly regular lives.

Ever hear of market research?

[Yizelin]

I don't understand the increasing number of "studies" that come floating around MMO players. The majority of people that have their life affected from video games in general is so small that I can't see any reason for them in the first place. Pick another topic and genre of people to help.

I only hope you're not governmently funded.

It's actually fairly straight forward, and not anywhere near as negative as you perceive it to be (leading questions notwithstanding, as I haven't looked at them yet). There is a woefully low amount of peer reviewed articles and journals that are focused on games studies (did not make getting my Masters easy on that front ). Gaming degrees are becoming more welcome in academia which requires these peer reviewed articles and journals for validity. As such, more people have to put out surveys specific to their cause ([Gaming] + [Topic]) since they have little to pull from otherwise.

In short, it's a growing pain of becoming accepted in academia. If it bothers you, don't participate?

[Aceda]

It's actually fairly straight forward, and not anywhere near as negative as you perceive it to be (leading questions notwithstanding, as I haven't looked at them yet). There is a woefully low amount of peer reviewed articles and journals that are focused on games studies (did not make getting my Masters easy on that front ). Gaming degrees are becoming more welcome in academia which requires these peer reviewed articles and journals for validity. As such, more people have to put out surveys specific to their cause ([Gaming] + [Topic]) since they have little to pull from otherwise.

In short, it's a growing pain of becoming accepted in academia. If it bothers you, don't participate?

I didn't say it was negative. I didn't even imply that is was bad. I just wasn't grasping the concept behind it until THEPALLYTANK threw the obvious in my face with the economics of it.

It doesn't bother me, I was just having trouble understanding the why. And I didn't participate.

[Detheavn]

Some questions didn't really fall in the 5 option scale, so I basically answered those with Agree or Disagree. Not sure if that's just a limitation of the survey 'software', but it may be worth looking into next time.

Didn't find any question sound really negative, but there were a couple of repetative ones on douchebaggery ... Quite funny

[Deleted]

I didn't say it was negative. I didn't even imply that is was bad. I just wasn't grasping the concept behind it until THEPALLYTANK threw the obvious in my face with the economics of it.

It doesn't bother me, I was just having trouble understanding the why. And I didn't participate.

To address all your questions, which are valid, I'd just wish to say Yizelin is right on. There are very few serious studies done on gaming and most studies are done by people who *do not play games*. Research by people who do play games (and have grown up playing games) thus provide an important counterpoint to many of the rather poor research papers that have been published so far.

In a similar fashion, several people raise the point that questions are negatively leading or that they seem to measure gaming addiction. Where do you think these ideas of "gaming addiction" come from? From people who play a lot of games? Think again

This project is a part-time thing I'm doing for my own curiosity. I am doing a PhD on Internet addiction trying to *counter* the present discourse of addiction to computer games, arguing for alternative views such as a changing culture explaining a whole lot more about why people engage intensely in gaming. The thing is, whenever I survey players I have to include questions on addiction because otherwise it becomes impossible to counter the existing discourse with any empirical data. People then think I'm trying to stigmatize gaming and label players as addicted - even though I'm trying to do the exact opposite!

Moral of the story: Unless you're the researcher you don't know the full purpose behind the survey, so the best participation you can give is to just take the survey as-is and answer as truthfully as you can....and criticize where criticism is due. Don't base the criticism on what you *think* the researcher is concluding though, because that may not always be correct. (Although having said that, if someone is working in a hospital or medical research centre, don't take their addiction studies seriously)

[theKarn]

While taking the survey I got the filling that you asked the same questions in different ways. At one point i got that filling three times. You also used subjective wordings such as "sometimes" and "often" a lot. Those types of questions tend to confuse people.

The question that I became unsure of was the "When playing WoW I often PvP" I was not sure how to answer that question as I have often, in the past, done my fair share of PvPing but have recently tried to cut back on doing that to keep myself from going insane. I answered with an agree just because a fair amount of my time has been spent pvping.

In closing, I would like to say that I have always viewed the sliding scale questions as always Yes or No answers on strongly agree or disagree. In national scale surveys the other 3 options are always regarded as a 0 so answering them in a 1-5 is irrelevant. If you actually meant the middle answers to be valid answer please forgive my "yes or no" mentality on them.