AS Edexcel Psychology - Study Into Modern Gamers (2010)

8/6/2019 AS Edexcel Psychology - Study Into Modern Gamers (2010)

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1 Social Psychology Study Into Gamers | Ian Lai & Amir Abdullah Sani

REPORT CONTENT PAGE

INTRODUCTION 2

The Aim The Hypothesis

METHOD / PROCEDURE 3 7

Introduction 3 Experiment Advertisements (Images) 4 5 Ethics: Disclaimer 6 Ethics: Further Explained 7

THE QUESTIONNAIRE (ANNOTATED) 8 14

Online Questionnaire (Screenshot) 13 Images Used 14

RESULTS 15 20

Stratified SampleCONCLUSIONS 21

EVALUATION 22

BIBLIOGRAPHY / CREDITS 23

Feedbacks From Participants


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INTRODUCTION

From the 3rd

to 9th

of October 2010, Muhammad Amir Abdullah Sani and Ian Lai carried out an online

questionnaire to study console gamers. The questionnaire conducted focused on investigating the

in-group attitudes from a group of gamers towards an out-group of non-gamers or gamers with an

entirely opposing choice of gaming genre, and vice versa.

Amir and Ian: Study Into Modern Gamers (2010)

The Aim

The sole purpose of this experiment was to investigate if the formation of social groups is instigated

as a result of games, the roots of conflict between different groups of gamers and whether or not,

prejudice is present as a result of different types of games.

The Hypothesis

Before the start of this experiment, Muhammad Amir Abdullah Sani and Ian Lai predicted that:

There is a difference in attitudes and people prefer those who share a similar gamingpreference compared with those that have a highly dissimilar gaming preference or none at

all.

The in-group would generally discriminate and act prejudice towards members of an out-group due to their contrasting gaming preferences, and vice versa.


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THE METHOD

The online questionnaire was constructed on the popular LimeSurveyweb software. In order to

satisfy the ethical guidelines, a detailed disclaimer was used on the front of the questionnaire that

requested the participants acceptance before proceeding with the questionnaire.

The questionnaire consists of 15 questions divided into 5 distinct categories of:

Background: questions relating to the participant. Gaming Preferences: questions relating to the participants gaming background. Gaming Attitudes: questions relating to how a participant feels about certain games or the

people playing these certain games.

Gaming Opinions: questions on a participants opinion pertaining to 4 different games. Conclusion: closing questions to consolidate the participants answers.

The questions were organised from the less sensitive to the more sensitive questions. A few controls

were introduced in the process in order to sustain the experiments reliability, such as:

Private Access: the questionnaire was set on private to prevent contamination of theresults, as the experiment required responses from specific groups of people that were well-

informed of the questionnaires aims.

One Chance: participants were only allowed ONE attempt in taking the questionnaire toprevent a possible contamination of the results through retakes.

Survey Tokens: tokens were used by the participants to unlock the private questionnaireand to allow categorization of the participants.

Three different sampling methods were used, as followed:

Stratified SamplingThe questionnaire was advertised on different locations including a web community that

focused strongly on one game and a web community that focused on a range of different

games. On the community that focused strongly on one game, they were assigned a survey

code of, 3455, on the other community, they were assigned, 3411.

Volunteer / Self-SelectedA group of random participants also participated in the questionnaire. They consisted of

people from websites including: Twitter, Facebook and viewers of Ians personal website.

These participants were assigned the survey code 2772and 4141.

Opportunity Sampling / Grab SamplingMuhammad Amir Abdullah Sani and Ian Lai chose random participants that were online on

their instant messaging contact lists and asked if they would be willing to do a questionnaire.

These participants were given the survey code 1122if they played games often, 1111if

they do not play games often and 4747if unsure which category they best fit in.


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THE METHOD: EXPERIMENT ADVERTISEMENTS

Location Image

Twitter

Facebook

IansPersonal

Website


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KryptoDEV

UMaple


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THE METHOD: ETHICS

The experiment was conducted after close examination of major, universal ethical guidelines and

standards. Participants were consistently reminded of their rights, their privacy and the experiment

they were taking part in. Below is an image of the disclaimer used at the start of the questionnaire:

This disclaimer was prepended the beginning of every participants questionnaire. There were no

amendments made throughout the experiment. Participants were required to review the above

disclaimer before clicking Next to proceed with the questionnaire. Upon doing so, they were

prompted for a survey code/token:


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THE METHOD: ETHICS (CONTINUED)

COMPETANCE

Muhammad Amir Abdullah Sani and Ian Lai are both qualified and educated AS Level Psychology

students with sufficient knowledge to carry this experiment out. The questionnaire received

numerous approvals from colleagues to confirm that it does not contain any inappropriate content

or questions.

RIGHTS TO WITHDRAW

As evident from the questionnaires disclaimer, participants were free at any point oftime, to

withdraw from completing our questionnaire. The disclaimer also states, Upon completion, you

have all rights to withdraw your submission from our study without question...which allowed

participants to withdraw their results even after they have completed the questionnaire.

This was additionally reinforced on our advertisements (see images above) stating, You can choose

to quit this questionnaire or withdraw at any point of time. Thus, participants were given the

highest and optimum degree of withdrawal privileges.

This guideline was clearly in practice as there were several participants that ticked the checkbox at

the end of the questionnaire, to opt out along with several participants that left the questionnaire

unfinished.

INFORMED CONSENT

All the participants were given complete informed consent before carrying out the questionnaire

with no specific deadlines given as to when they wish to take it. Participants self-volunteered

themselves to take our questionnaire and denied if they did not want to.

AVOIDING DECEPTIONAll the participants were thoroughly briefed as to the experiments aims via the disclaimer (see

images above) as well as on some of the advertisements. Participants were allowed to ask questions

regarding the experiment and they were not deceived in any way.

DEBRIEFING PARTICIPANTS

Muhammad Amir Abdullah Sani and Ian Lai obtained informed consent from participants before

they began the questionnaire thus rendering debriefing unnecessary. Participants were told to read

the introduction of the study as well as the privacy policy before giving informed consent to ensure

they were in the same state after completing the questionnaire as they were before completing it.

Participants were also allowed to ask questions or provide feedback at the end of the questionnaire.


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THE QUESTIONNAIRE: ANNOTATED

The following is a sample of the complete online questionnaire in print-ready format, annotated.

The questions are presented in the following manner:

Category

- Category Description

Question # [ID] Question

- Instruction(s)

- Option(s) / Answer Block(s)

- Additional Help / Information

Background

General questions about you.

Participants were given the ability to

choose from a range of ages or specify

their current age

We included this question as it would

help us determine if age has an

influence in gaming prejudices and

whether or not they associate better

with their group due to age.

We included this question to distinguish

between opinions from females and

males, and whether or not gender has

an influence in gaming prejudices and

discrimination.


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Participants were given the ability to

select their preferred types of games

and state a reason why, if any.

We included this question as it would

help us later on, access whether or not

they are prejudice or discriminatory

towards the type(s) of games they did

not select.

It would also allow us to compare and

contrast results between participants

with opposing choices of games.

Gaming Preferences

Questions on your gaming background.

We asked this question to find out

where gamers felt more comfortable

playing their games. If a large

percentage of gamers played at publiclocations such as internet cafe's it

became possible to assume these

gamers would have a significantly

higher level of prejudice towards other

gamers as these gamers tend to play

in groups of players playing the same

game.

We asked this question to see how

much of a gamer the participant was.

The more hours a participant spends

playing the more loyal they become to

their favourite games. We wanted to

see if this affected their level of

prejudice towards their peers.


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This question allowed to us to find out

if gamers had negative attitudes

towards their 'out-group' peers and

positive attitudes towards their 'in-

group' peers.

Gaming Attitudes

Questions relating to how you feel about certain games or the people playing these certain games.

We asked this question to find out if

gamers that tend to play with their

friends, have a higher level of prejudice

towards others that play alone.

This question was asked to find out if

there were any recurring games thatcame out more often than others in the

final results.


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From questions 10 to 13, participants

were presented with an image and

description of a game. All 4 of these

games are different in terms of thegameplay.

MapleStory is a Massively-Multiplayer

Role-Playing game (MMORPG); Call of

Duty is a First-Person Shooter (FPS);

FarmVille is a Simulation game, and

StarCraft 2 is a Real-Time Strategy

game (RTS).

Participants were asked for their

opinions based on the outlook of these

games. This was used so we could

investigate whether people who do

not play one of the games or dislike

any of them, would discriminate it and

develop biased views towards the

game as it is different from the types

of games they prefer.

The images required for the next set of questions (images 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4 respectively) will be

appended to the end of this annotated questionnaire. On the online version, it would be present on

the question itself for participants to see (refer to the appended images at the end of this

questionnaire to see how this is achieved).

Gaming Opinions

Questions on your opinions about random games.


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These closing questions was asked

to help us consolidate our results

with the question directly relating toour hypothesis.

Conclusion

Closing questions to consolidate your answers. Please answer with complete honesty.

Online Questionnaire (Screenshot)


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THE QUESTIONNAIRE: IMAGES USED


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RESULTS

Throughout a period of 1 week, there were a total of73 responses 47 complete and 26

incomplete. All 26 incomplete responses are considered as withdrawals by the participants and will

not be included in the final results. As some questions allowed participants to skip or select, No

Answer, the total responses for each question may vary. Anomalies and responses made by

participants that requested a full withdrawal are not included.

Background

The majority of the participants were males under the age of18 with 58% belonging to the 16 to 18

age group. The participants generally preferred First-Person Shooter, Real-Time Strategy or Role-

Playing games. In terms of favourite genre, they generally preferred military games. There was also a

higher preference for multiplayer games over single player games.

On average, 78% of the participants spend around 11.71875 hours a week playing games. The

remaining 22% of participants spends over 40 hours a week playing games. When asked, When you

decide to play, who do you often play with?majority of participants selected Friends, however,

86% selected Home when asked where they would often play.

Below are common games are participants are currently playing and its type:

Call of Duty (Modern Warfare / Modern Warfare 2) First Person Shooter (FPS) Warcraft: Defence of the Ancient Real-Time Strategy (RTS) MapleStory Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) Counter Strike: Source / Condition Zero First Person Shooter (FPS) Starcraft 1 / 2 Real-Time Strategy (RTS)


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RESULTS

Gaming Attitudes

Around 50% of the participants prefer people with similar choices of games. However, 88% are

comfortable with anyone regardless of their choices of games and 63% get along with everybody.

Out of all the participants, 53% shares a similar choice of games with their peers; 19% are unsure.

42% of participants agreed that they tend to play a game because of their friends; 44% disagreed

with the remainder unsure.

Gaming Opinions: MapleStory

The above results for MapleStory are the overall results from all the legitimate responses by our

participants. For results of our stratified samples, please refer to the end of our results page. There is

a clear balance between opposition and support for this game.

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Strongly

Disagree

Disagree Not Sure Agree Strongly

Agree

I tend to play a game cause

my friends do

My friends all share a

similar choice of games

I get on with everybody

I like people even if they do

not prefer my choice(s) of

games

I like people who prefers mychoice(s) of games

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Strongly

Disagree


Agree

I will try it out if my friends

asks me to

I would encourage others

to try this game

I think this game is fun

I am interested in knowing

more / interested in this

game

I have heard about / played

this game


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Gaming Opinions: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2

Majority of the participants were strongly supportive for this game. They believed it was fun,

interesting and they would most likely encourage their friends to play it or even try it out if their

friends recommended it to them.

Gaming Opinions: FarmVille

This game lacked popularity amongst our participants. Majority of participants were strongly against

this game and felt it was uninteresting, not fun and they would not try it or recommend it to their

friends.

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Strongly

Disagree


Agree


asks me to

I would encourage others to

try this game




game


this game

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Strongly

Disagree


Agree


asks me to


try this game




game


this game


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RESULTS

Gaming Opinions: Starcraft II Wings of Liberty

Conclusion

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Strongly

Disagree


Agree


asks me to


try this game




game

I have heard about / playedthis game

23 1818

Have you ever judged someone based on

a game they play and how?

Yes

No

25 1515

Do you currently have a favourite game, if

so, do you think it is better than all othergames, why?

Yes

No


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RESULTS

When asked how the participant judged someone based on a game they play, several common

responses includes the following (in no specific order):

People have the rights to choose a game. It is matter of opinion.

People should be judged by their character, language, culture and other factors. The choiceof games is not an important factor of friendship.

No. Games are just for leisure. Games are a way of people to trigger their imagination andcreativity. Just because they steal a car in GTA, doesnt mean they will do it in real life.

Yes. I make fun of people that play cissy games. Hard core games are the best. Violent games have the potential to make people violent. MapleStory and FarmVille are for losers. If they play Club Penguin or Runescape when they are 15. When someone plays online poker, I assume the person was confident in playing card games

and that he understood qualitative games and activities better.

If they play too much, they have no life. Yes. When they suck / lie about being pro Blame teammates for loss.

Participants were also asked if they had a favourite game and whether or not they think it is better

than other games and why, below are a few common responses (in no specific order):

No. I play a different game every week. All games are meant to be unique in their own way and shouldnt be compared with others. If I had a favourite game, I would obviously think it is better. Personal choice. I prefer it / suits my taste / used to it. Strong fan base / large network / fun to interact with people and friends. Rich storyline and atmosphere. Cool, fun, amazing and better than all other s*** **s lame PS3 games or PC games out

there.

A lot of freedom / I can do nearly anything I want / not difficult / little commitments. Expansive map. Vast features and ability to customise.


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CONCLUSION

Although 50% of the participants preferred people with similar choices of games, there is a tolerance

in 86% of them for people with different choices of games. As around 50% of our participants agreed

that they share a similar gaming preference or that they would tend to play a game because of their

friends, this is not enough to show the formation of groups as a result of different gaming

preferences, and hence, is not sufficient in proving any sort of conflicts as a result of differentgaming preferences.

There is a strong dissatisfaction over the game MapleStory from a group of other gamers in contrast

with a group of MapleStory community members. These 2 groups however, share a similar gaming

preference and hence, this is not sufficient enough in proving discrimination over a game as the

result of different gaming preferences. The participants decision to try a game is also strongly

uninfluenced by their peers. This further proves the unlikeliness of prejudice between an in-group

and out-group as participants are in an autonomous state, strongly detached from group influence.

However, due to the strong dissatisfaction over MapleStory by the in-group of gamers (the other

gamers), prejudice by the in-group may be present and based upon other factors of the game (e.g.the features, gameplay, etc) rather than a common game theme.

There is a strong dissatisfaction over the game FarmVille by all the participants in general. There is

evidence of discrimination and prejudice over this game by the in-group (all the participants) as our

participants generally comprise of male individuals that enjoys military inclined, First-Person

Shooter, Real-Time Strategy and Role-Playing Games, with little or no support for Simulation games.

This is further evident in results from participants opinions on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (a

First-Person Shooter game) and Starcraft 2 (a Real-Time Strategy game). FarmVille currently has over

62 million active users worldwide which suggests the game is enjoyable and interesting. However,

this contradicts entirely with the judgements made by our participants that suggested the game wasnot fun or interesting, and they would not recommend it to their peers or even try it. Therefore,

there is evidence of prejudice from an in-group towards an out-group (FarmVille) due to contrasting

gaming preferences.

Finally, through results from our conclusion, majority of our participants are prejudice and

discriminatory towards a person due to their choices of games. People willjudge another persons

personality or characteristics based on their choices of games, e.g. If you are a guy playing a girls

game, people would think you are soft or even homosexual. However, as the ratio of Yes to No is

almost 50:50, there is not enough evidence to prove this is generally the case with everyone and as

some participants pointed out, people have the rights to choose what games they prefer and theyshould be judged on other important factors rather than the games they play.

In addition to this, there is not enough evidence to prove game favouritism will result in prejudice

and discrimination towards other games as being bad compared to their game. Therefore, conflict

is not inevitable and as quoted from one of our participants, All games are meant to be unique in

their own way and shouldnt be compared with others. I might think it is better, but this is my

opinion and others may think differently too. In conclusion, we believe that discrimination and

prejudice towards another game exists within an individual rather than a group. Peoples gaming

preferences have no impact in the formation of an in-group or out-group and although people prefer

people with a similar gaming preference, they are able to get along with anyone and having a similargaming preference would only allow them to have something in common to talk about.


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EVALUATION

There are irregularities in sampling sizes and this may affect the results. In addition to this, results

were not very gender representative and focuses mainly on the male opinion rather than the female

opinion. This is crucial as female may have a different opinion of for example, military games

compared to simulation games. In terms of cultural representative, the questionnaire was posted

online and taken by people from the United States, to Korea and the United Kingdom. It is thereforestrongly cultural representative. As there were no fix variables for the above factors, the experiment

is not really reliable and if replicated, it might not produce a similar result.

As results were being collected, there were several unfinished, vague or unbeneficial responses. This

suggest that the questions is perhaps too closed for participants to place their ideas or thoughts or

perhaps too difficult and long for them to finish. The anomalies suggest some participants did not

take the questionnaire seriously and perhaps more attention should be given in informing

participants about the seriousness of the study. The sources for the poorer or anomalous results

were also primarily from open questions that produced qualitative data. The quantitative results

however, were easier to analyse and completed more readily.

The questionnaire was highly valid however, as images were used when asking for the participants

opinion of a said game which allowed the participants to visualise the gameplay.

On the last 2 questions of the questionnaire, many participants did not properly address the

question which suggests the question is vaguely expressed and more detail should be included in the

future to ensure the desired responses. Quite interestingly with the opinions on MapleStory, the

group of MapleStory players selected that they were not interested in the game despite the fact

they agreed that the game was fun, perhaps there was some misinterpretation in the question.

As participants were fully aware of the study, their responses to the questionnaire may be biased

and due to social desirability, as participants may not want to be seen as being prejudice or

discriminatory over their peers based on their gaming preferences. A separate survey should

perhaps be conducted in the future in the form of a semi-structured interview.

As quoted by Jamie Madigan, the social identity theory explains or at least predicts the Great

Console Wars of today and tomorrow. As proven in Tajfel and Turners experiment, they were able

to demonstrate group favouritism within a group of boys organised through painting preferences.

Tajfel and Turner theorized that people have a tendency to construct identities based on group

membership and that we naturally want to be in a group of higher status (the in-group). However,

for a group to see themselves as a group of higher status, the in-group would have to compare

themselves with a group of lower status (the out-group) in order to raise their status.

Our experiment may not have produced the expected results as the in-group is possibly vaguely

defined. If participants were perhaps informed of the distribution of players between the 4 games

they were asked to give opinions about, this could perhaps alter the results as they would either

attempt to maintain their status or exceed the status of another group. Other key areas should also

be explored or narrowed down, such as the gaming platform or the social identity theory within a

specific game (e.g. competitions) or genre (e.g. First-Person Shooter - Counter Strike Vs. Call of

Duty).


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BIBLIOGRAPHY / CREDITS

IGN Entertainment -http://www.ign.com/For the images used in the Gaming Opinions section.

Wikipedia -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FarmVilleFor the fact about FarmVilles total active players.

The New York Times -http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/fashion/29farmville.html?_r=1

For consolidating Wikipedias fact about FarmVille.

LimeSurveyhttp://www.limesurvey.orgFor providing us with a free web-based questionnaire solution.

KryptoDEVhttp://www.kryptodev.comFor participating in our questionnaire.

UMaplehttp://www.umaple.netFor participating in our questionnaire.

The Psychology of Video Games -http://www.psychologyofgames.com/tag/social-identity-theory/

How Social Identity Theory Predicted the Console Wars of 07

Feedbacks From Participants

Location Image

UMaple

KryptoDEV

Facebook
http://www.ign.com/http://www.ign.com/http://www.ign.com/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FarmVillehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FarmVillehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FarmVillehttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/fashion/29farmville.html?_r=1http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/fashion/29farmville.html?_r=1http://www.limesurvey.org/http://www.limesurvey.org/http://www.limesurvey.org/http://www.kryptodev.com/http://www.kryptodev.com/http://www.kryptodev.com/http://www.umaple.net/http://www.umaple.net/http://www.umaple.net/http://www.psychologyofgames.com/tag/social-identity-theory/http://www.psychologyofgames.com/tag/social-identity-theory/http://www.psychologyofgames.com/tag/social-identity-theory/http://www.psychologyofgames.com/tag/social-identity-theory/http://www.psychologyofgames.com/tag/social-identity-theory/http://www.psychologyofgames.com/tag/social-identity-theory/http://www.umaple.net/http://www.kryptodev.com/http://www.limesurvey.org/http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/fashion/29farmville.html?_r=1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FarmVillehttp://www.ign.com/

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AS Edexcel Psychology - Study Into Modern Gamers (2010)