Explorations in player motivations : Game mechanics

Abstract

Player motivations are a popular research area in computer gaming. But beyond the identification of a limited set of motives, research so far has been neither concerned with how these motivational variables interact with each other, nor how they relate to individual player actions. This article, assuming that player motivations are the outcome of continuous player-environment interactions, applies the needs framework of Murray (1938) to a computer game and investigates the relations between each individual need and the driving game mechanics behind them. It is shown that the restrictions imposed by the game mechanics significantly reduce the number of player needs satisfied by a game, thereby trapping the player within the common motivational cycle of Achievement, Aggression, Harmavoidance and Acquisition. This motivational study on gaming experience should facilitate the design of computer games that satisfy a broader range of player needs by providing ways to investigate the matching actions for each individual need while identifying the common patterns imposed by game mechanics. Analysis of player motivations on action level should also open up new frontiers in the player profiling process in interactive gaming experiences that should ideally appeal to many types of players. This discussion is framed in terms of the user-environment relations of a recently released popular computer role-playing game (RPG). It is stressed that the gaming experience provided by this genre is analogous to real life and thus has the potential to satisfy a broader range of player motivations. © 2009 EUROSIS-ETI.