The motivating role of violence in Video Games (Przybylski, Ryan & Rigby, 2009).

Abstract

Six studies, two survey based and four experimental, explored the relations between violent content and people’s motivation and enjoyment of video game play. Based on self-determination theory, the authors hypothesized that violence adds little to enjoyment or motivation for typical players once autonomy and competence needs satisfactions are considered. As predicted, results from all studies showed that enjoyment, value and desire for future play were robustly associated with the experience of autonomy and competence in gameplay. Violent content added little unique variance in accounting for these outcomes and was also largely unrelated to need satisfactions. The studies also showed that players high in trait aggression were more likely to prefer or value games with violent contents, even though violent contents did not reliably enhance their game enjoyment or immersion. Discussion focuses on the significance of the current findings for individuals and the understanding of motivation in virtual environments.

Method

Participants/Design

Study 1
1028 participants, 99 female and 929 male mostly recruited from online forums
Ranged from 18 to 39 years – asked questions about their favourite game
Mean age of 24.14, and 38.40% were in a relationship or committed
Note that later on, 105 participants were dropped from analyses
Study 2
68 undergraduate students, 21 male, 47 female with a mean age of 19.5 years
Study 3
99 students, 41 males, 58 females with a mean age of 20.1 years
Study 4
101 students – 36 males, 65 females with a mean age of 19.6 years
Study 5
39 students – mean age of 19.54 years
Limited to males who regularly spent more than 5 hours per week playing video games (average of 7.47 hours a week)
Study 6
1642 participants – 195 female, 1447 male, ranging from 18 to 43 with a mean age of 23.9 years
Recruited from the same online community as in study 1
Note that 94 titles did not have ratings, resulting 94 people dropping out

Thoughts on participants

Study 1 and 6 are sort of problematic as they used one online community from a popular forum – while they are all gamers, certain gamers tend to be attracted to certain forums, so it may not be an accurate representation of actual video gamers – especially if it’s only PC gamers instead of console gamers for instance
Study 5 used a small sample size of people who asked for course credit – may not be indicative of general male gaming population as it’s supposed to be
Other then that, looks pretty normal and typical

Materials

Study 1

All items were given online and all were rated on a 7-point Likert scale unless mentioned otherwise.

Player experience of Needs Satisfaction (PENS)- Ryan et al. 2006

A scale designed to measure in-game competence and in-game autonomy. Competence was rated on a three-item scale with an alpha level of .70, and autonomy was rated on a four-item scale with an alpha level of .69. Self-report.

Presence.

Nine-item scale from the PENS – three items each assess emotional, physical and narrative presence – averaged together to form presence with a total alpha level of .88. Self-report.

Game enjoyment.

Four items adapted from Intrinsic motivation inventory – alpha level of .82. Self-report.

Sequel interest.

One item to test this – self-report.

Word of mouth.

One item to assess whether people were likely to spread the word bout the game via word of mouth – self-report.

Violence ratings.

Based on the following two measures:

ESRB rating.

THE ERSB is a group that rates games on a 1-5 scale: E for everyone, E10+ for everyone that is 10 years or older, T for teen, M for mature, and AO for adults only. This was coded as 1-5, although in this study no AO games were picked, leaving a scale that was 1-4. Additionally, 105 participants picked games that were not rated, and these were dropped from the analyses. This left 923 participants (85 females, 838 males – mean age of 24.17).

Violence coding.

Three raters coded games on the following scale: 1 was given for games with no violent content, 2 was given for games with abstract violence (i.e., Mario killing things by jumping on them), 3 for games with impersonal violence (killing groups of people that aren’t really related to you or don’t look human), 4 for games with fantasy violence (World of Warcraft), and 5 for games with realistic violence. An inter-rater reliability of .95 was found based on 50 game titles, so after these 50 titles only 2 raters continued rating the remaining games.

Study 2

House of the Dead 3 (Xbox 360).

Video game that offers graphically violent gameplay.

Game Enjoyment/Presence/Player experience of Needs Satisfaction (PENS) measures.

As Above.

Preference for Future Play

Five self-report items were used, with an alpha level of .92.

Trait Aggression (Buss & Perry, 1992).

A 29-item self-report scale was used. Formed four subscales: physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger and hostility, collapsed together to form trait aggression. Alpha level of .94.

Study 3

Glider Pro 4.

Arcade game that is non-violent

Marathon 2.

First-person shooter that involves challenges with violence involved

Same self-report measures as in study 2.

All alpha levels were .85 or above.

Study 4

Half-Life 2.

Created three environments in Half-life 2:

A training ground with no violent content for participants to practice in. They were then asked to play one of two versions of the actual game: in one, they are told that their enemies want to kill them and they must kill them in a bloody manner, and in the other, enemies were only programmed to target them with a nonweapon marker.

Same self-report measures as in other studies.

Alpha levels were .75 or above for all measures

Study 5

House of the Dead 3.

Asked to either play a version with highly graphical and realistic violence, or a version with no blood, gore and wounds were neon colours

Same self-report measures as in Study 2.

Alpha levels ranged from .86 to .94

Study 6

Same self-report measures as Study 1.

Alpha levels were: .68 for competence, .73 for autonomy, .80 for enjoyment, .78 for presence and .95 for trait aggression. Sequel interest and word of mouth were also assessed with one item

Same ESRB ratings and coded ratings as Study 1.

94 titles did not have ratings, leading to 8 females dropping out and 86 males

Self report measure of game value.

Participants rated whether they thought the game was worth its price on a one-item scale

Thoughts on materials

Almost all of the materials are self-report, which introduces desirability bias into the results, and additionally, the authors do not mention whether they had any measures to catch people who were simply ticking all the boxes on the left (i.e., reverse scoring, similar questions etc. etc.)
Some items were based on one question, which limited their validity

Procedure

Study 1

Participants were asked to fill out a survey about their favourite game

Study 2

Students were asked to play a game and filled out both preplay (trait aggression/filler questions) and postplay assessments (competence, autonomy, presence, enjoyment and preference for future play).

Study 3

Students were randomly assigned to play a violent or non-violent game
Questionnaires were given before and after a 20-minute gameplay session

Study 4

Participants came in and played a training session for 20 minutes
They then completed a short survey
They were then randomly assigned to either low or high-violence conditions for 20 minutes
Afterwards, they were asked to fill out post-questionnaires

Study 5

Same as in Study 2 except an additional IV of high/low violence was introduced

Study 6

Same as study 1

Thoughts on procedure

A lot of studies that are fairly similar which is good for replication’s sake and showing different things
Not sure how effective 20 minutes of gameplay is for actually showing effects
Pretty high face validity when giving a trait aggression questionnaire before playing a violent game – might be bad for realistic results

Results

Study 1
Preliminary Results

99 games rated as E for everyone, 32 of 10+, 506 a rating of teen, 286 a rating of mature, and no games being adult only. Mean violence rating of 3.90 (SD = 0.99).
Men selected more violent games and games that had higher ESRB ratings than females
Females had higher presence in their games
No other sex differences emerged among the analyses

Primary Results

Correlations show that in-game autonomy, in-game competence, game enjoyment, presence, word of mouth and sequel interest are all significantly positive correlated with each other
Regressions show that in-game autonomy and in-game competence consistently predicted higher amounts of game enjoyment, presence, word of mouth and sequel interest above chance (with in-game autonomy always being higher than in-game competence, by 2-3x)
Violence was only significant in predicting presence

Study 2

Preliminary Results

Males reported higher competence and autonomy
No other sex or age differences emerges

Primary Results

In-game autonomy and in-game competence were significantly positively correlated with game enjoyment, preference and presence
Trait aggression was significantly correlated with future presence, but not enjoyment or presence – also unrelated to competence, but associated with autonomy
Regressions showed similar effects – in-game autonomy and in-game competence predicted game enjoyment, preference and presence, while trait aggression only predicted preference for future play

Study 3

Preliminary Results

Males reported higher competence than females
No other sex or age differences
No differences of condition

Primary Results

In-game competence and in-game autonomy significantly predicted enjoyment, future preference and presence while violence did not at all
Additionally, an interaction between all 3 DV’s were found between high and low trait aggression such that people low in trait aggression were less likely to enjoy the game, prefer the game in future or feel attached to the game in the high-violence condition compared to the low-violence condition, and the opposite effect was observed for people high in trait aggression
These interactions were no longer significant when controlling for autonomy and competence satisfactions

Study 4
Preliminary Results

Males reported higher competence, autonomy, enjoyment, and preference for future play
No sex differences emerged for other DV’s
No differences of condition

Primary Results

In-game autonomy and competence significantly predicted enjoyment in both the low and high violence conditions
Only in-game competence predicted future preference and presence for both high and low violence conditions
For the high violence condition, trait aggression predicted presence and future preference
Preference for future play was moderated by condition – the lower in trait aggression you were, the less likely you were to play games if you were in the high-violence condition, and the opposite for people higher in trait aggression

Study 5
Preliminary Results

No differences of condition on competence ,autonomy, enjoyment, preference for future play or presence

Primary Results

In-game autonomy and competence predicted enjoyment and future preference, but only autonomy predicted presence
Interactions for enjoyment and future preference between condition and trait aggression were significant as in previous interactions – but no longer significant when controlling for needs satisfactions

Study 6
Preliminary Results

Female participants were older, had higher autonomy, enjoyment, presence and sequel interest.
Male participants had higher trait aggression, and selected games higher in violence and in ESRB rating

Primary Results

Correlations showed that autonomy and competence were positively related to game enjoyment, presence, sequel interest, word of mouth and game value
Additionally, violence was rated to higher autonomy, presence and game value
Regressions showed that competence and autonomy significantly predicted all 5 DV’s
Violence significantly positively predicted presence
Only one significant interaction – those higher in trait violence valued games more if they had a lot of violent scenes

Thoughts on results

Interesting stuff – the many studies show a lot of support that in-game competence and autonomy are strong motivators for whether people will like the game
I’m not sure if this data has much value however – I mean the more competent and independent you feel in the game world, logically the more you’re likely to buy the game because you think you’re good at it, so not sure if this reflects actual motivations for playing games, or if it reflects people just feeling better at certain games and thus being more likely to play them
I guess a better measure of in-game competence/autonomy, or being able to manipulate it would give me stronger results here
This is more like a mini-discussion section I released.. oops
This entire study was self-report which is quite problematic – perhaps it’s more about who the person is rather than what the authors found (i.e., people are more likely to feel independent and competent are also more likely to want to play video games or just rate them as higher) – these alternative explanations need to be explored more I think.
It is good to note that violence is not a significant predictor of game enjoyment/desire most of the time, though I think they may have just included that aspect to get more attention, as I don’t think violence would often be a motivator for people to just play games in general

Discussion

General Discussion

Consistently showed strong support for self-determination theory
Violence adds little or no motivation for players in terms of enjoyment or preferences
However, people high in violent traits were more likely to play them in future

Przylbylski, A. K., Ryan, R. M. & Rigby, C. S. (2009). The motivating role of violence in video games. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 243-259.

Study 3
99 students, 41 males, 58 females with a mean age of 20.1 year

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Written by Philip Witowski

October 1, 2009 at 11:17 am

Posted in Positive Video Gaming, Psychology, Social Psychology

Tagged with Positive Video Gaming, Psychology, Social Psychology, Video Games, Violence

Video Games, Science and Random Thoughts