Gamers are not a monolithic group; gaming preferences and motivations vary among gamers in important ways. An empirical model of gaming motivations allows developers and researchers to create more effective and engaging experiences for entertainment and serious games. We developed an online app and used an iterative process to create the Gamer Motivation Profile. Using survey data from over 250,000 gamers worldwide, we used factor analysis to develop an empirical framework of gaming motivations and a validated tool to measure those motivations.

We identified 6 clusters of gaming motivations: Action (Excitement & Destruction), Social (Collaboration & Competition), Mastery (Strategy & Challenge), Achievement (Power & Completion), Creativity (Design & Discovery), and Immersion (Story & Fantasy).

In this talk, we'll first describe the motivations we identified, present findings on the higher-order relationships among these motivations, how they vary by gender and age, and how they are related to the Big 5 personality traits.

Respondents to the Gamer Motivation Profile also listed specific games they've enjoyed playing. In the second part of the talk, we'll present case studies of how we have applied this game audience data within the game industry to provide actionable insights for game marketing and production.