Community Help the University of Missouri-Columbia answer: Why do you play games?

[DarkUnderlord]

Tags: Chris Engelhardt; Joe Hilgard; University of Missouri-Columbia

You might know Joe Hilgard because he posts on the forums as @hipscumbag. Due to regulations on research and advertisements, here's a direct copy-paste from him:

Hello, Codexians!

We are two social psychologists who want to know: Why do people play games? What do different people want when they play games? Why do some people hate the games other people love, and vice-versa?

Please help us understand the science of the gamer brain by participating in our survey study! The survey takes about 15-20 minutes, and asks you about your video game habits, likes, and dislikes. To thank you for your participation, people completing the survey will be entered into a raffle to win one of ten $20 Amazon giftcards.

We think this research will really help us to better understand why we play and what we like. We can’t wait to see the results, so please, give science a hand and take our survey!

Take the survey at: https://missouripsych.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_6nVjnuE8hzEXdSA.

You can contact us at the following email addresses:
Joe Hilgard – Principal Investigator - jbhkd6@mail.missouri.edu
Chris Engelhardt – Co-Principal Investigator - cre8f9@mail.missouri.edu
Dr. Bruce Bartholow – Faculty Advisor - bartholowb@mail.missouri.edu

Remember that your participation is completely voluntary and that you can stop the survey at any time without penalty. This project is psychological research performed through the University of Missouri-Columbia.​

So, why do you play Hentai, you sick perverts games?

 

[Wyrmlord]

It's a way to kill time no different from bicycling in the woods now and then or just playing toss the ball on the lawn.

It's no major scientific revelation what different people want from games - they want to have fun. If they don't have fun, they won't play. Any other answer is pure hipster gibberish.

People hate games other people love because different people have different opinions.

Why does this require 15-20 minutes to figure out, Mr. hipscumbag?

 

[Zed]

How prestigious is this University on a scale 1-10? I will put "involved in computer game related studies at U of M-C" on my CV.

Well, I was gonna do it but after 3 pages I realized it would take quite some time. It's 5AM! I'll do it tomorrow.

 

[commie]

I didn't see any Breivik or Columbine related options...I am disappoint.

 

[felipepepe]

I got to page 4, but rage quitted...very badly made research, it's a insane ammount of question to ask and expect people to fill in, they are clearly pushing in some agendas, and A LOT of questions are the exact same thing....did they really need three different questions like this:

Winning is fun; losing isn't.

Losing a game always makes me mad - what a waste of time!

Losing is frustrating and detracts from my experience.

And there are tons of repeated questions like those....they could cut like 40% of that MASSIVE questionary just by editing it a little, but if they don't have the goodwill to edit their research, I ain't gonna have the goodwill to answer it...

 

[DarkUnderlord]

It's basic Psychology 101 to ask the same question in a variety of different ways to see if the respondent really means it or is just responding to certain words.

 

[felipepepe]

It's basic Psychology 101 to ask the same question in a variety of different ways to see if the respondent really means it or is just responding to certain words.

Yes, on an IRL interview with a survey professional that can be discretly used on some very important subjects, but to use that so often and obviously on a internet survey it's insane! No one is gonna crawl over more than 100 questions, clearly feeling like they are answering the same stuff over and over again....I don't doubt that most of the people that start the survey quits around page 3-4 too...

 

[Excommunicator]

More like 10 minutes to complete. It doesn't take long at all.

Clearly written by a story fag though.

 

[Jaesun]

I am going to have to agree on the "retarded questions" and agree with this. It's like they did not spend any amount of time researching the Codex and are just asking very general Console Retard™ questions. They should have hit up the Watch, RPS, or Kotaku for general Console tard answers.

Like take for example this question: Winning is fun; losing isn't.

WELL DUH! I WANT TO WIN TEH GAME!!!!

retardjumpingupanddown.jpg

My actual thoughts when reading this question were:

Hmmm well I recently was playing Ray Dyer's The Realm Series FRUA Modules and the Recommended modules for an East Campaign (which are quite BRUTAL) and after barely surviving A1-4, Aerie of the Slavelords, our party ended up at C1, Hidden Shrine of Tomoachan. Of which when the party arrives, there are lethal gasses within the first area that are toxic and will damage and will kill the party. Any un-necessary searching and time wasted exploring is lethal to the party. My party unfortunately died.

Was losing NOT FUN? No, it was an excellent experience. And perhaps one day another party of mine may explore the realms and perhaps survive the utter fucking hell of C1, Hidden Shrine of Tomoachan.

 

[zeitgeist]

This project is psychological research performed through the University of Missouri-Columbia.

To what end? What is the actual practical purpose of this project, and in which ways will it benefit the participants and the researchers?

And I do agree that the questions seem to be written by people with poor understanding of the subject, but isn't that the case with most psychological research?

 

[hipscumbag]

I got to page 4, but rage quitted...very badly made research, it's a insane ammount of question to ask and expect people to fill in, they are clearly pushing in some agendas, and A LOT of questions are the exact same thing....did they really need three different questions like this:

It's basic Psychology 101 to ask the same question in a variety of different ways to see if the respondent really means it or is just responding to certain words.

Yes, this is how it tends to work. I would prefer to make the questionnaire shorter if we could, but we are in an early stage of development. We need a lot of questions and a lot of data before we can see what shakes out - see which are the good questions which measure ideas well and see which are the bad questions that don't measure much at all.

I deeply appreciate everyone's time, if they do volunteer; if you don't wish to volunteer, you have every right not to, of course!

Also, it is possible to start and stop the survey - if you come back within a week, you can pick up where you left off.

I am going to have to agree on the "retarded questions" and agree with this. It's like they did not spend any amount of time researching the Codex and are just asking very general Console Retard™ questions. They should have hit up the Watch, RPS, or Kotaku for general Console tard answers.

Since we're very interested in the ways that certain groups of gamers are different from each other, I'd say that this is perfectly according to plan! I'm well aware that the Codex attracts a particular breed of gamer. Developing this survey will help us in the laboratory measure these differences in preferences and attitudes, which I personally find very exciting.

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

The survey is just too long. Fuck, that already felt like a chore half-way.
And $20 in Amazon gift thingies? More of an insult than incentive, guys. Just ask nicely if you can't afford paying, next time.

Still, if this improves the chance for someone, somewhere, someday, making a game with what I like in mind, then why not.

 

[hipscumbag]

This project is psychological research performed through the University of Missouri-Columbia.

To what end? What is the actual practical purpose of this project, and in which ways will it benefit the participants and the researchers?

We're trying to develop this survey as a tool to measure the preferences and behaviors of different players. As you've probably noticed from some amount of forum discussion, certain things seem to be important to some players while other players don't care about those same things at all. We think that these will be meaningful predictors of whether certain players will find certain games enjoyable (a player who hates to lose will probably not enjoy roguelikes!) and potentially how, when, and how frequently people play games.

This project is something of an extension of Nick Yee's Daedelus Project in which Dr. Yee attempted to separate and measure different players' reasons for playing MMOs (UO, SWG, DAoC, WoW). We hope to broaden and refine this sort of survey for more general use on a wider population of players.

There's no immediate benefit to you, the volunteer - so please don't feel like you are obligated to participate.

 

[Marquess Cornwallis]

The re-phrasing of questions will appear in any serious online surveys, too. The bigger problem, present in most tests and surveys I have ever seen that is not really fixed by the re-phrasing, is that you can relatively easily think of several types of context for many (if not most) answers that will significantly alter the meaning of the response; this is often caused because the questions pre-suppose a certain context. These are the two I'm currently at (and there are much worse):

When I play video games, I don't feel connected to the other players.

Losing is frustrating and detracts from my experience.

The first question probably pre-supposes multi-player video games, but it could also be interpreted in a variety of ways by people who play (almost) exclusively single player games ("Do I think about other people playing this and what their reaction might be to the problem I'm solving? Is my rage shared by others at the RPG Codex? Does this endow me with a certain sense of brotherhood?"). The other question is not specific enough about "losing"; there are too many forms and interpretations of it to give a meaningful answer (Multi-player? Dying? Getting an unfavourable delayed outcome/consequence?). I find myself answering too many questions with "neither agree nor disagree" or "N/A" for this reason.

The problem is worse with actual tests where the outcome can become almost wholly dependent on being able to reverse-engineer the test creator's thinking process, but I think it can also damage usability of survey results. I had many disagreements over this when we were creating various types of tests and surveys back at the university, and I was always pushing not only for as clear and unambiguous formulations as possible, but also for asking the respondents to provide brief context for their answers.

Edit: Which is basically what Jaesun complained about in the meantime.

 

[zeitgeist]

We think that these will be meaningful predictors of whether certain players will find certain games enjoyable (a player who hates to lose will probably not enjoy roguelikes!)

But they won't, and this very comment of yours reveals how meaningless it will be, since the questions are too general and don't take genre conventions or any game characteristics, features, combinations of features and such into account at all. It's perfectly possible that the exact same person who dislikes losing in an MMORPG PvP setting will enjoy roguelikes very much, for example.

I can only see this giving out any useful data at all if it was focused on one specific genre (or better yet subgenre) of games only.

 

[catfood]

Do you consider yourself to be Hispanic or Latino? Y/N

 

[Shannow]

Yep, context matters. I hardly play multi-player games, yet at least 30% of all questions were mp related. I don't play games to get violence out of my system (that's what posting on the dex is for), yet 70% of the questions clearly wanted me to be a little kiddie with anger issues. I actually do mod games, so all the questions about "hypothetically" modding games were also
Next time make a survey where I can trash dressing up, pay to win and story-fags some more.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

The problem with this game is, it's incredibly boring. Also it's in english without german subtitles, no voice-overs etc. Lost interest after page 2.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

I don't play games to get violence out of my system (that's what posting on the dex is for), yet 70% of the questions clearly wanted me to be a little kiddie with anger issues.

I yes'd all of those.

 

[Grunker]

hahahaha

DO YOU WANT TO KILL THINGS? NO REALLY, JUST TELL US HOW YOU'RE GETTING ALL THAT PENT UP ANGER OUT BY CRUSHING THEM PIXELS! SERIOUSLY, WE KNOW YOU'RE NOTHING BUY A VIOLENT CUNT WHO IS TO WEAK TO TAKE IT OUT ON REAL PEOPLE SO YOU WHACK DIGITAL PEOPLE INSTEAD

Must have been at least 15 questions on that topic, all very leading to the point of comedy

anyway, answered dem questions

 

[Mozgoëbstvo]

But the real question is, if I complete the survey, will I be able to download the password for the encrypted .rar file?

 

[Grunker]

Also, the racial lead-in is hilarious. Kwans gonna kwa.

 

[JarlFrank]

DO YOU SEE YOURSELF AS HISPANIC

 

[Shannow]

I consider myself caucasian. Halp.

 

[Angthoron]

DOES BEING VIOLENT IN THE GAME MAKE YOU FEEL UNVIOLENT OTHERWISE? ARE YOU GONNA GO POSTAL???