Beyond P-1: Who Plays Online?

Abstract

Academics and industry professionals alike have long been interested in developing a nuanced and empirically sound typography of online gamers. Designers and engineers are aware of the value of well-considered "personas" to help guide the software development process. This study takes a new, quantitative approach to analyzing the aggregation of empirical characteristics for more than 1100 gamers. A statistical process called “factor analysis” reduces the dimensionality of this study’s survey data and mathematically suggests four distinct archetypes of online gamers that statistically account for more than two-thirds of play preferences. The significance of these findings is that they offer quantitative support for characterizing different kinds of online gamers in the way that other researchers have qualitatively interpreted their experiences.