Archive For The “Research” Category
Brant Guillory, May 2006
This is a presentation that combined 2 different survey-based studies of hobby games players.
The first focused on informal learning and academic achievement, the second was the fresh-off-the-presses factor analyses of the big GAMA gamer motivation study in 2006. I combined the two into one presentation because, well, frankly because a bunch of the Comm School faculty (yes, you Chip, and Dan, and Andrew) didn’t think I had any actual research I was doing because I wasn’t following their wagging tails down the “political communication” primrose path. (more…)
by Brant Guillory, originally written while a student at the University-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named, back in 2007
Note: This paper was written in 2007, and minimally-revised since then. Although the numbers are not current, the analysis of hobby games as a niche within overall publishing, and the analyses of volatility and entrepreneurship are still of interest in examining the market. Anyone with a burning desire to revisit this paper and update with current market numbers is welcome to do so, and to contact us about publication.
Additionally, the target audience is one that is not familiar with hobby gaming, and thus the very, very, very (did we mention “very”) brief section on the history of hobby gaming will appear laughably incomplete to pretty much anyone inclined to read this article on a strategy-gaming website. Given that whole books have been written on this subject, just go with it – focus on the data analysis instead.
Experiences of Hobby Game Players: Motivations Behind Playing Digital and Non-Digital Games
Based on a large online data collection effort back in 2006, the collaboration of GAMA, Ohio State University, and another website, resulted in a pretty robust dataset that yielded a variety of interesting explorations.
CarrieLynn Reinhard and Brant Guillory, 18 April 2018
ABSTRACT
Central to our understanding of why people play digital games (either video or computer games) is to understand the reason people want to “play” a game in the first place. Playing, once reserved for only real-life interactions among people, is now the venue for interacting with digital manifestations of reality; but the question remains, is this digital-based playing different than real-based playing? The purpose of this study was to investigate the patterns of motivation and usage by card, role-playing, computer, and board game players, known in this study as hobby game players. Through an online survey, we measured the reasons people play these games, as well as the milieu in which they play these games are played. What does the game player like in a game? Why does the gamer like this? What motivates continued game play and preferences for types of games? The results indicate that digital game playing shares several underlying motivations with its pre-digital predecessors, but in ways that are still different than tabletop gaming.