Massively multiplayer online role-playing games

Abstract

While some service providers of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) lose significant numbers of players over time, others maintain a strong growth trajectory. Drawing from the Uses and Gratifications Theory and the Need to Belong theory, we believe that an individual's Perceived Belonging (i.e., the degree to which a person feels connected to and accepted by others) positively influences his/her Actual MMORPG Usage, i.e., how often he/she plays MMORPGs. After collecting 71 online questionnaires and applying a structural equation modeling approach, we found that Perceived Belonging's positive influence on Actual MMORPG Usage is fully mediated by Perceived Enjoyment. Overall, our study suggests that MMORPG service providers should include belonging-oriented aspects into their games, such as the possibility of interacting and cooperating with other players, in order to increase individuals' game usage through their Perceived Belonging.

The Influence of Perceived Belonging on Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games

“…Indeed, in order to be able to master many of the games' quests, players usually have to strongly collaborate [1,11]. More specifically, players team up with other players that they meet along the way and come to appreciate.…”

“…To empirically evaluate our research model, we collected 71 completed German-language online questionnaires about one specific MMORPG: Guild Wars 2 1 . More specifically, we posted a call in a German Guild Wars 2-focused forum and, to add variance, in two general Internet forums.…”

“…The first was a 7-point scale with the adjectives frequent and infrequent at the endpoints. The second was a 'check the box' format, with 1 Guild Wars 2 is one of the most successful MMORPGs with more than 7 million accounts as of October 23rd 2015, which equals an increase of about 40 percent from August 2015. Players have to choose from a combination of five races and eight professions to create their avatar and team up with other players in the course of the game in order to fight dragons, other teams, etc.…”

“…To master the game in MMORPGs, players usually have to interact with other players for example via chats, by trading or by collaboratively completing quests [1,11]. Hence, in contrast to traditional role-playing games such as Final Fantasy VII, which are played offline and alone, there is a large social aspect embedded into most MMORPGs.…”

Integrating players, reputation and ranking to manage cheating in MMOGs

“…MMOGs are both highly sophisticated technological systems -in most cases built around a client-server architecture -and 'deeply social' worlds [3,4,5] in which millions of players chat, cooperate, interact, compete and trade with each other online through their avatars. Notable examples of these types of games are World of Warcraft (WoW) or Lineage.…”