Segmenting online gamers by motivation

Player Types: A Meta-synthesis

“…In addition to the Bartle's achiever, explorer, socializer and killer, only immersion oriented play as a qualitative mode of play/player orientation could be found on the same abstraction level from other literature. Outside these psychographic types, previous literature has also suggested using in-game demographic factors (Hamari & Lehdonvirta 2010;Zackariasson 2011) and gaming intensity (Ip & Jacobs 2005;Drachen et al 2009;Hamari & Lehdonvirta 2010;Tseng 2010;Kallio et al 2011). Some works, such as Yee (2006) and Kallio et al (2011) do provide sub-dimension to the higher abstraction level player motivation and mentalities; however, on this abstraction level the studies do not add additional dimensions of player types.…”

“…Some authors, on the other hand, have based their typologies directly on marketing theory. Hamari & Lehdonvirta (2010); Hamari & Järvinen (2011);Zackariasson et al (2010) and Tseng (2010) refer to marketing theory and discuss segmentation in their papers. The results of this paper could help game companies better understand their clientele, and the results could be used as a starting point for a more thorough and "exact" segmentation.…”

“…For example, Bartle's (1996) types were originally interpretations of in-game behavioral patterns, but Yee (2002) took the types and used them as a basis for his motivation-based theory. Tseng (2010) did a psychographic analysis on gamer market, but one of his segments (Inactive gamers) encompasses the fact that many belonging to that segment are ex-gamers, which is actually a behavioral quality and not a psychological factor.…”

“…Tseng (2010) approached the question with two motivational factors, namely the need for exploration and the need for conquering. The need for exploration entails not only the obvious exploration, but also social and achievement orientations.…”

Gamer Psychology and Behavior

“…Applying personality measures such as Myers-Briggs typology, Five Factor Model, or trait theories to gaming (Bateman and Boon 2005 ;Teng 2008Teng , 2009Zammitto 2010 ;Park et al 2011 ) is also problematic because they fail to explain the majority of game preferences and it is very diffi cult to match these psychological constructs with individual actions. There are also studies that focus solely on online computer games (Leo Whang and Lee 2004 ;Tseng 2010 ;Zackariasson et al 2010 ;Hamari and Lehdonvirta 2010 ;Jansz and Tanis 2007 ;Williams et al 2006 ), mostly Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs), where the generalizability of the results might be questionable. These existing player typologies may be suited to researching or analyzing player psychology in the context of digital games but a diverse range of motivational factors have been proposed across studies with a substantial amount of similarities.…”