Why We Play Games

Social interaction is a subject on which we gamers take a fair bit of static from our non-gaming peers. Sometimes this is because they mistake differing priorities for introversion. Wanting to talk about the relative merits of the Western Plaguelands against Winterspring as a post 55 grinding location isn't really any different from wanting to talk about the strength of the Bill's secondary, its just that one of them is relevant to a somewhat narrow audience. We tend to be somewhat socially awkward folk, in part because the hobbies in which we invest a sizeable amount of our time have rigid rules governing most interactions, making them poor training for the free wheeling reality of human discourse. For some gamers, the Social Interaction found in the gaming experience is a primary motivator.

Social activity in gaming occurs on many levels. At a very low level, gaming can be a reinforcer for existing social groups. Think of a group of friends getting together to play a board game or some Half Life. The social activity found in modern online games can be much broader in scope. MMORPGs, to which discussion of the current state of gaming always seems to gravitate, are essentially groups of people that already share some primary common link. The friendships formed through online cooperation and friendly competition can be one of the biggest draws of such games. Anyone who has ever stayed up later than they should because their guild needed them or because someone asked them to has experienced this. These online relationships are no less real, no less significant than their offline analogues.

Challenge. Competition. Creation. Escape. Socialization. Five different motivators, all of which combine to make up the motivation of a particular gamer. We could add more, certainly, but these will do for now. So where do we go with this? I'm having to physically restrain myself from drawing a pentagonal map and plotting individual gamers on the five motivational axes. While it would look neat and might be an interesting topic for an esoteric role-playing text, it wouldn't get us anywhere.