sorry for my delayed reply. I did end up buying Skyrim yesterday, but that hasn't been what's holding me up (honest!), i'm only sitting down to play it tonight.
On the topic of motivations of play, there has been some research on the topic. When researchers investigate something like this they ask A LOT of gamers A LOT of questions about why they play video games, what they get out of it, then they apply a statistical analysis technique that looks at the reasons people give, and determines which reasons are 'intercorrelated', or basically, which reasons bunch together - and these bunches are called 'factors'. The statistical technique that looks at these underlying structures is called 'factor analysis'. In this case it's used as a way of mapping the common reasons people give for playing video games.
Nick Yee is one researcher who has conducted a factor analysis exploring motivations for play, and he came to the conclusion that motivation for most people falls under 10 components, which fit under three broad headings, listed below:
Achievement component
Advancement—The desire to gain power, progress rapidly, and accumulate in-game symbols of wealth or status
Mechanics—Having an interest in analyzing
the underlying rules and system in order to
optimize character performance
Competition—The desire to challenge and
compete with others
Social component
Socializing—Having an interest in helping and
chatting with other players
Relationship—The desire to form long-term
meaningful relationships with others
Teamwork—Deriving satisfaction from being
part of a group effort.
Immersion component
Discovery—Finding and knowing things that
most other players don’t know about
Role-Playing—Creating a persona with a background story and interacting with other
players to create an improvised story
Customization—Having an interest in customizing the appearance of their character
Escapism—Using the online environment to
avoid thinking about real life problems
Now Nick Yee's research was slanted a little towards MMORPGs, but it's still interesting. Here's a reference to the full article -
http://www.nickyee.com/pubs/Yee%20-%20Motivations%20(2007).pdf
Not that surprisingly escapism has shown a slight connection to problem play, but what is being escaped isn't really known yet. Also interesting that one sub-component of the competition is dominance over other players specifically, which seems a little like the joy players get from using a 'dirty' tactic to ruin other players experiences, what do they call the rocket launcher in MW, noob tube? That might be on topic with that component.
Those motivations have been developed into a scale that measures why you play. These techniques, being quantitative research, are looking into why MOST people play, and don't rule out other more unique reasons of course.
By the way anyone who found the study interesting and would like to share it with friends, you can do so via the facebook and twitter share on the site, I need as many participants as I can get, there are literally millions and millions of gamers so the more people, the more representative the sample! -
www.videogamestudies.net
Off to try out Skyrim,
Dan.
