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Writer's picturejonnyxglassman

What motivates you to play?

When we talk about playing games, what are we really talking about? At the risk of going wide with this question: what is a game? Philosophers have been arguing about this for centuries, maybe even millennia. One of the most popular definitions was made in 1961 by the French Sociologist Roger Caillois who defined games as an activity that is fun, separate (it is not something that happens in the course of everyday life or society and has its own boundaries such as a playing field or a game board), uncertain (the outcome is not preplanned), non-productive (nothing useful is gained from playing), governed by rules (has rules that are separate from the rules of everyday life), and is fictitious (players are aware that the game is self contained and differs from everyday life). This definition works pretty well, but there are some exceptions, such as gambling games that produce monetary earnings for the winner, thus violating the non-productive rule, or alternate reality games where the game is woven into everyday life thus violating the separate rule.


The truth is that games are hard to define because they mean different things to different people. Everyone has different goals when they play a game, and even players of the same games may have different reasons for playing it. In this post I want to explore player motivations as well as the objectives people have for when they play a game.


People have many different motivations for playing games, but I think every game player shares one motivation: escapism. Escapism itself is a bit of an umbrella term; for some people escapism means having fun, for some people escapism simply means a distraction from an anxiety or stressor, and for some people it means having a fantastical experience. Whatever escapism means to an individual, games are an excellent provider of it. But what exactly makes a certain type of escapism right for the individual player? That’s when more individualized motivations come into play.


Game players are a diverse group, so it makes sense that people have all sorts of motivations for why they play games. Motivation in games is a fairly new research field, but Quantic Foundry has helpfully classified six different types of motivations for gamers that we can assess. Those motivations are action, social, mastery, achievement, immersion, and creativity.


Players motivated by action want to be engrossed in a game that demands that they stay focused on the gameplay and doesn’t give them time to look away. Players can be motivated by action in two different (and not mutually exclusive) ways: destruction and excitement. Players motivated by destruction like using weapons to cause damage in a chaotic environment. A destruction-motivated player would pick up GTA V, use cheats to give them every gun with unlimited ammo, and go on a rampage across Los Santos. Players motivated by excitement like fast-paced gameplay full of surprises and thrills. This type of player would pick up GTA V and use a cheat code to get a fast car and a 5 star wanted level before leading the police on an epic chase.

To be fair, I'm pretty sure this is how GTA V was meant to be played.


Social gamers enjoy interacting with other players and do so primarily in two different ways, through competition and/or through community. Players motivated by competition want to be the best at their game and prove their mettle by playing against other players with the hope of achieving the highest rank. A player motivated by competition would play a game like Overwatch and grind out ranked matches in hopes of achieving a top 500 placement by the end of the season. Players motivated by community are more interested in building relationships and teamwork than they are with proving their skill. An Overwatch player that is motivated by community is more likely to spend time playing casual games with a group of players they enjoy playing with.


Players motivated by mastery enjoy the physical and intellectual challenges that games present. Mastery can come in two different forms: challenge and strategy. Challenge refers to being able to overcome highly difficult gameplay through building one’s own skill level. A Warcraft 2 player that is motivated by challenge will play the campaign missions on the highest difficulty level and won’t be satisfied until they’ve beaten every one of them. A player motivated by strategy is less concerned with the game’s difficulty level and is more motivated by the thrill of making a plan and executing it. A Warcraft 2 player that’s motivated by strategy enjoys coming up with clever build orders and battle plans that their enemies have no hopes of countering.


Achievement motivated players are more concerned with quantity. The two sub-types of achievement motivation are completion and power. I think we all have a completionist friend who won’t leave a single stone unturned, NPC unspoken to, or mission uncompleted. A completion motivated Pokémon player won’t stop playing until they’ve filled out the Pokédex by catching or trading for every single Pokémon in the game. While the completionist is more motivated by a percentage, the power player is more motivated by getting their numbers as high as possible. The power player wants to be able to deal the most damage, have the highest health, the strongest equipment, and the biggest stash of treasure. A Pokémon player that’s motivated by power is going to make sure their Pokémon have the perfect IV spread and level their team up to 100 so they can smash any and all challengers.



Mathematical proof that you're having more fun than everyone else


Players concerned with immersion are interested in being transported to another world and are more concerned with the narrative aspects of games. Immersion comes in two forms: fantasy and story. Players motivated by fantasy enjoy the idea of being someone else in a new and fantastic world. A Fallout 4 player motivated by fantasy likes to imagine they really are in a post-Apocalyptic Boston and are excited to role play as a roving survivor. A player motivated by story is interested in learning about the world they are occupying and the characters that populate it. The story motivated Fallout 4 player will spend time getting to know all the individual factions and read through every email that may contain a bit of background info about the game world.


Finally we have players motivated by creativity. These players want to push the limits of not only their imagination, but of what the game can offer. Players with creative motivations find fulfillment in design and discovery. Players motivated by design enjoy expressing themselves through a game’s ability to build, whether that means creating characters, buildings, vehicles, or entire worlds. A Valheim player motivated by design may create a server where they don’t have to worry about enemies or resource collection and simply build a large Viking village. A discovery motivated player enjoys trying new things that the game may or may not have anticipated them trying and simply exploring the game world. A Valheim player motivated by discovery will enjoy running through the game world to discover caves, abandoned villages, and new biomes as well as collecting all of the different resources in the game to see what kinds of recipes they’ll unlock.



Someone spent 4.5 years of their life building this on Minecraft. Talk about getting your money's worth out of a game!


These motivation types aren’t mutually exclusive, and Quantic Foundry often groups a handful of them together to come up with a larger gamer profile. After taking the Quantic Foundry test they have classified me as a “bard,” someone that enjoys immersive stories that emerge from the game’s community. I’m not so sure I agree with this assessment (more on this in a bit), but the category by category breakdown seems more applicable to me: I’m highly motivated by mastery, social, and immersion (my dominant sub-motivations within each of those sections being strategy, community, and fantasy, though I’m also highly motivated by discovery which is a creativity sub-motivation) and I’m almost entirely unmotivated by achievement.


Unfortunately, as good as the Quantic Foundry motivational profile is at defining different game motivations, its process for categorizing gamers isn’t so great yet: many people who take the Quantic Foundry survey report that they do not strongly identify with the player motivation profile that they were assigned. But that’s to be expected, this is a new type of personality test and it needs to be refined and calibrated before it can be fully accurate, I’m sure Myers-Briggs didn’t knock it out of the park on its first try either. I encourage anyone interested in personality tests or game motivations to take a few minutes to partake in the survey as well, it can be found on their website https://apps.quanticfoundry.com/.



You're just saying that because I'm a Scorpio.


Motivations not only inform what types of games a player may enjoy playing, but also how they may enjoy playing that game. As we just discussed, I’m a player that is motivated by community, exploration, fantasy, and strategy. As such, you can expect that I’d probably be more interested in playing a game like Valheim or Elder Scrolls and less interested in a game like Street Fighter or Just Cause. But when I load Skyrim, what do I actually want to do? Do I start collecting missions and helping out the people of Skyrim? Do I go on a dragon hunt? Do I role play as a Vampire and live by night in Windhelm until I’m run out of town? Honestly, all of those sound pretty fun, but because I am motivated by exploration, fantasy, and community, the one that sounds most appealing is questing around the continent and helping the people of Skyrim. Questing will take me all over the continent and often to interesting places which will fulfill my desire to explore, having to do things like clear out enemies from forts or solve puzzles allows me to exercise strategic thinking, completing quests will allow me to participate in a hero fantasy, and by completing the story and seeing more of the game I will be able to participate in the Skyrim community by doing things like talking about favorite quests, crazy situations I found myself in, and what kind of gear I used. A player more motivated by action may be more interested in playing Skyrim and trying to fight multiple giants at once. A player more motivated by achievements may try to grind out levels to make their character so powerful that they’ll be able to one-shot dragons. Players with different motivations may be attracted to the same games, but they may play them in different ways.


So what do you think your motivations are for games, and how do you think they affect the way you play games?


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2 Comments


ao103458
Jun 22, 2022

For immersion. I don't have a life that really needs "escape" but its relaxing to go off into another world and enjoy myself for a while.

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jonnyxglassman
jonnyxglassman
Jun 24, 2022
Replying to

Thanks for the response. I've had a few people now message me about how they don't think they use games to escape, but I think almost all forms of entertainment are escapism. Most definitions of play include something about how play is separate from the rest of our lives (work, daily self-care, socializing, etc.), so I think it's fair to say that anything that all play is a form of escapism. Might be worth devoting a future post to this idea!

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