Motivations of Internet Gaming

COMPETITIVE

Video games in the past decade has evolved into an online competitive nature. Majority of video games today have some form of online capability. This gives gamers the opportunity for competition amongst many individuals on a wide scale. When video games first came on the scene a gamer only had the option to play with individuals who were physically around them. In present day competition is found with just the input of a person’s screen name. Online capabilities allow for gamers today to want to play video games more often. Competition amongst players gives them the motivation to find the best, beat the best and ultimately become the best. “According to Explaining the Enjoyment of Playing Video Games: The Role of Competition”

The authors discovered that video games help gamers to actually take pride in themselves. “Taking the psychological consequences of competitive situations into account, both the desire for maintaining or enhancing one’s own self-esteem and the search for positive moods should be regarded as general factors that motivate people to seek for social competition”. The article helps validate that competiveness is a motivation for gamers to play video games. Video games help the gamer to interact with other individuals socially in a competitive nature without having to be in the room. “Social competition can be regarded as a process which develops by competitive actions performed by individuals or social entities in order to maintain their own interests to the disadvantage of others. Each social entity monitors the process by ongoing evaluations of the „status quo“. These evaluations include the perception about how the current individual’s position is in contrast to the positions of the others and what tendency is expected for the further process of the competition.” The passage shows that social competition helps motivate gamers to be the best gamer. When a person is competitive and succeed at it, they hold a sense of pride for the achievements, (Vorderer, Hartmann, & Klimmt, 2003).

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SOCIAL CONTACTS

In years prior to the internet, many people seen video gamers as people who had no social life. Individuals who own gaming consoles are pictured as obsessed, nerdy, with no friends, this is a far stretch from gamers today. Many gamers today use gaming as a source to interact with other individuals creating a social community. Gamers are able to build friend list with other gamers who they previously played with. The headset used with gaming console allows for verbal communication to take place, along with in game messaging. In the article “Play to win” by Leigh Buchanan he addresses the question does constant gaming hurt players’ social skills. His response to the question was: “Actually, it does the opposite. Collaborative play is quickly becoming dominant in this medium. Most people who play alone are just rehearsing the skills they need to participate in group activities. Users of multiplayer or alternative reality games learn to work with other people over distance, to share knowledge, to resolve disputes quickly, and to stay on task. Any large company needs collaboration and coordination among people in multiple locations who bring different skills and knowledge to bear on a problem.” (Buchanan,2006) Gamers today use video gaming as a motivation to socially interact with other gamers. Video games aren’t just used to occupy one’s time, it’s now used to motivate others to help each other better skills.

WOMEN AND GAMING

In many people’s minds video games are usually played by males. Women are not looked at as playing video games for hours at a time with friends of the same sex. Thus, gives a reason for girls to start playing video games against boys. Since boys and girls have been little the old saying has been around "boys rule and girls drool" and vice versa. Girls in the gaming world have started to build this sense of motivation to be better than the boys. Since video games come on a level playing field not like baseball, basketball, or other physical sports women are allowed to compete against others with no limitations.

A study was done in 2006 amongst American and U.K. females. "According to current user data for the U.S. market (ESA, 2005), 43% of all video game players are female (in contrast to the gender gap in Germany). Online games as a "new" form of video game playing have been adopted by many female players as well (44% of all online-players are female, ESA, 2005). The Sims' success as a top selling video game has been attributed to its attractiveness to female players (cf. Carr, 2005); this adds to the discussion of female-targeted game design (Cassell, 1998; Cassell & Jenkins, 1998b; Graner-Ray, 2003; Gorriz & Medina, 2000; Miller, Chaika, & Groppe, 1996), but does not explain females' lower interest in video games per se." (Hartmann and Klimmt 2006) In this day and age females don't want to be playing house and sewing, they want to do exactly the same things as their male counterparts. In a male dominated world females are more determined than ever to even the playing fields. For related games, Click Here