Gaming at a LAN event: the social context of playing video games

New Media & Society http://nms.sagepub.com Gaming at a LAN event: the social context of playing video games Jeroen Jansz and Lonneke Martens New Media Society 2005; 7; 333 DOI: 10.1177/1461444805052280 The online version of this article can be found at: http://nms.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/7/3/333 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com Additional services and information for New Media & Society can be found at: Email Alerts: http://nms.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://nms.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations (this article cites 28 articles hosted on the SAGE Journals Online and HighWire Press platforms): http://nms.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/7/3/333 Downloaded from http://nms.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 14, 2008 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ new media & society Copyright © 2005 SAGE Publications London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi Vol7(3):333–355 [DOI: 10.1177/1461444805052280] ARTICLE Gaming at a LAN event: the social context of playing video games ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ JEROEN JANSZ LONNEKE MARTENS Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ Abstract An exploratory survey was undertaken about the appeal of playing video games at a Local Area Network (LAN) event where personal computers are linked in order to play both face-to-face and online. First, we wanted to know who the visitors of a LAN event were, because there is hardly any research available about this class of gamers. Second, we wanted to know why they participated in a LAN event. The survey showed that LAN gamers were almost exclusively male, with a mean age of 19.5 years. They devoted about 2.6 hours each day to gaming. They were motivated by social contact and a need to know more about games. The competition motive was third in the total sample. A subgroup of heavy gamers obtained a higher score on competition. This article emphasizes the importance of the social context of gaming and interprets its results as a nuance of the stereotype of the solitary, adolescent gamer. Key words gender differences • interactive media • LAN event • motives • video games Playing electronic games on a personal computer (PC), game console, Game Boy or on the internet is a relatively new but massively popular kind 333 Downloaded from http://nms.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 14, 2008 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. New Media & Society 7(3) of mediated entertainment, in particular among young people (Nikken, 2003; Roberts et al., 1999). The popularity of these games is underlined by figures from the industry: in the United States game producers reported a steady increase in sales over the past five years, from $5.5 billion in 1998 to $7 billion in 2003 (Entertainment Software Association [ESA], 2004). The picture in the United Kingdom is similar: sales of entertainment software reached an all-time high in 2003, with values reaching £1.26 billion ($2.3 billion), an increase of 7.1 percent over the previous year (Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association [ELSPA], 2004). The game industry has become a serious competitor to the movie industry. In the UK, for example, the market of video games1 nowadays grosses more than cinema box office receipts (Poole, 2000). The increasing popularity of video games has not gone unnoticed. Critical observers have expressed their worries publicly about this new pastime. Video games have been criticized for many different reasons, but two issues dominate the public debate: the ubiquity of violence in video games and the risk of social isolation as a consequence of playing games. The violence issue gained prominence in the media as a result of a number of tragic violent incidents. In the aftermath of, for example, the shootings at Columbine High School (2001), the murders by the so called ‘Beltway’ snipers in Washington, DC (2002) and the school shootings in Germany (2002) and the Netherlands (2004), many commentators assumed a causal link between these murders and playing violent games. It was argued that the perpetrators were socially isolated adolescents who seemed to play out in real life what they had practised behind their screens playing Doom, Duke Nukem or other violent games (Anderson, 2004; Grossmann and DeGaetano, 1999; Thompson, 2002). The worries about violence and social isolation were sustained to a certain extent by scientific research. With respect to violence, several recent studies reported that a large majority of the games (between 64 and 79 %) had to be considered as violent (Dietz, 1998; Smith et al., 2003; Thompson and Haninger, 2001). The dominance of violent titles was reflected also in the US and UK sales charts around 2003. Violent games were well represented in the top ten in both countries (US: five titles; UK: four titles), notwithstanding the fact that non-violent sports games, such as Fifa Football 2004 and The Sims held the top positions in both charts (ELSPA, 2004; NPD group, 2004). In addition to the ubiquity and popularity of violent content, media effects researchers established the negative consequences of playing violent video games. Their meta-analyses showed a significant and positive association between playing violent games and aggressive behaviour. This means that playing violent games involves the risk that some players will be stimulated to act aggressively (Anderson, 2004; Anderson and Bushman, 2001; Sherry, 2001). 334 Downloaded from http://nms.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 14, 2008 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. Jansz & Martens: Gaming at a LAN event The results of research about gaming and social isolation are less unequivocal. On the one hand, there is indeed support for the stereotype of the adolescent ‘nerd’ playing for hours in isolation, putting his social relations with friends and family into peril and running the risk of developing an addiction (Griffiths and Hunt, 1998; Roberts et al., 1999; see also Turkle, 1985). On the other hand, it was found that video games also had positive social effects. Some studies documented that gaming occasionally produced new bonds within families, in particular between fathers and sons (Durkin and Aisbett, 1999; Durkin and Barber, 2002; Livingstone and Bovill, 1999; Pasquier et al., 1998). In addition, game players were seen to form new social relations in their peer group (Orleans and Laney, 2000) or on the internet by participating in online gaming (Griffiths et al., 2004; Parks and Robers, 1998; Schaap, 2002). This article aims to advance our knowledge about the social aspects of gaming. We chose to study gamers in the unique mediated context of a Local Area Network (LAN) event. At a LAN event, gamers link their PCs within a high-speed LAN in order to play together. The social activity of gaming amounts to fighting ‘clan wars’, where one group of gamers confronts other groups. In most cases, the battles are fought within the virtual worlds of ‘First Person Shooters’ (FPS), a highly competitive and extremely violent game genre. For us, as researchers, the LAN event provided a unique opportunity to study gamers who played a violent type of game in a social context. We are among the first researchers to study LAN gamers in a systematic fashion. Recently, Swalwell (2003) published a theoretical analysis of gaming at a LAN event, which she based on her own observations and interviews with a small sample of interviewees. We conducted an exploratory, quantitative survey among LAN gamers in order to expand our knowledge about this specific group of gamers. Our project was guided by two principal research questions. The first was: RQ1: Who are the visitors to a LAN event? There is no research to date which offers a description of this particular class of gamers. Therefore, we set out to establish the demographic characteristics of the participants in a LAN event, in particular with respect to their age, gender and social relations. In addition, we gathered data about their gaming behaviour, in particular with respect to the time spent playing a video game, the platform on which they played (PC or game console) and their preferences for particular games. The second question was: RQ2: What motivated the LAN gamers to participate in a LAN event? We employed a uses and gratifications framework to study the motives as they were reported by the participants (Rubin, 2002; Ruggiero, 2000). We 335 Downloaded from http://nms.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 14, 2008 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. New Media & Society 7(3) wanted to establish the importance of the social context of playing together, in comparison with other conceivable reasons for participation, for example, the opportunities for competitive game-play. Further, we wanted to establish if any differences in motives were discernable between the male and female visitors to the LAN event, between different age groups and between LAN gamers with specific preferences for particular games. THE APPEAL OF VIDEO GAMES To date, there is no research of which we are aware regarding the appeal of playing video games in the specific context of a LAN event. Therefore, the development of a motivational theory about the attractiveness of LAN gaming must rely on studies about the appeal of gaming in general. In this section, first we will situate video games as interactive media, then discuss the principal motives that gamers reported for using this kind of mediated entertainment. Video games come in many types and genres, but all varieties share one fundamental defining characteristic: games are an interactive kind of mediated entertainment. ‘Interactivity’ is a hybrid concept with many different meanings (Kiousis, 2002). In a strict sense, it refers to the structure of the media technology; in a wider sense it refers to the communicative context of media use (Kiousis, 2002). Strictly, the interactivity of video games is a process which includes both the gamer and the game. It means that the gamer is able to change what happens in the game by some motor action via an interface (Grodal, 2003; Vorderer, 2000). The wider meaning of interactivity with respect to video games also embraces interpersonal communication: gamers interact with each other through the moves in the game that they play. The two meanings of interactivity may be confusing in a study about the social aspects of gaming. In this article, therefore, we will confine the meaning of interactivity to its strict sense. We will employ ‘the social context of gaming’ to refer to the wider, communicative context of gaming. The constant exchange of messages between gamer and game, the succession of the roles of observer and participant and the options for testing a variety of realities, all underline the nature of gaming as play (Juul, 2003; Vorderer, 2001). This playful interactivity is a conditio sine qua non for the game to unfold. If the player does not react to the moves in the game, it simply stops. The active effort of the gamer to ‘play’ is rewarded or punished. Appropriate actions are reinforced by, for example, visual effects, sound effects, credit points, lives within the game or access to a higher ‘level’. Inappropriate actions or mistakes frustrate the unfolding of the game: the gamer must engage in extra effort in order to continue and may even face virtual death (‘game over’). 336 Downloaded from http://nms.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 14, 2008 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. Jansz & Martens: Gaming at a LAN event As a result of interaction, attention to its contents is maximized. This makes a video game one of the most immersive media (Vorderer, 2000). Gamers are drawn into the content and may thus experience a state that Stromberg characterized as ‘enthrallment’ (Stromberg, 2000). It is a state of consciousness in which engrossment and disbelief exist simultaneously. To become enthralled by a game means that one is engaged in a fantasy world which is ‘known to be false, but felt to be true’. In fact, enthralment requires the psychological skill of ‘fooling oneself ’ (Stromberg, 2000: 500). In other words, when people play a video game, they know they are roaming in a fantasy world, but they act as if it is real. In the case of gaming, interactivity is demanding rather than noncommittal, which must be taken into account in a theory about the motives of gamers. Following Ruggiero (2000), we believe that the uses and gratifications theory is best suited to explore the reasons why people become involved in interactive media and the gratifications that they may receive from it. Uses and gratifications theory emphasizes the active role of the media user. It argues that selecting and using media is a determinate, goal-directed activity: people use media to satisfy their needs and desires (Rubin, 2002). In the past, the uses and gratifications approach was criticized for its explicit reliance upon the activities and selective capacities of media users. It was argued that people often use media rather indiscriminately and assume a passive role (Adams, 2000; Windahl, 1981). In the case of interactive media, such as the internet and video games, the active role of users is beyond all doubt (Ruggiero, 2000). Interactive media can function only if users purposively select the information they require and engage themselves with a continuous exchange of messages. According to uses and gratifications theory, the individual’s motives are an important determinant of both the selection of, and active engagement with, specific media content (Rubin, 2002; Ruggiero, 2000). There have been few attempts to investigate the motives involved in playing video games. We concentrated on research about motives as they were reported by (young) adolescents. Different studies used different labels to categorize the motives. We subsumed the results of previous research about motives for gaming under five general headings: competition, control, entertainment, escapism and pastime. Competition This refers to a need to win or surpass others (Barnett et al., 1997). Competition is closely related to game content. Generally, sports and action games are the most competitive, but a simulation game may also satisfy this need, for example, when one is able to accomplish levels that one’s friends cannot. 337 Downloaded from http://nms.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 14, 2008 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. New Media & Society 7(3) Control The virtual world of a video game is appealing because it allows gamers to act as agents exerting control over their game character and its context. It should be noted, however, that control is never total. Gamers are confronted immediately with the limits of their command when they make a mistake. When they finally succeed after several attempts, they generally experience a gratifying sense of control (Barnett et al., 1997; Fritz, 1997; Grodal, 2000; Newman, 2002). Often, the gratification of control is linked to insecure adolescent years. The options for control in a video game may be a relief, in contrast with the uncertainties that adolescents may experience in ordinary life (Fritz, 1997; Steinberg and Morris, 2001). Entertainment This motive is rather non-specific. It refers to enjoyment as the (expected) outcome of playing a video game (Griffiths and Hunt, 1995, 1998). Phillips et al. (1995) found a related reason for gaming. The adolescents in their study said they played because it cheered them up. Escapism This motive for gaming has a close relationship with the immersive properties of a video game. The appeal of roaming in the virtual gameworld is that it draws one away from the bustle of everyday life (Barnett et al., 1997; Phillips et al., 1995). Pastime This last motive refers to a negative urge: when there is nothing else to do, there is always the possibility to engage oneself with a video game (Griffiths and Hunt, 1995; Phillips et al., 1995). Barnett labelled a comparable motive, ‘avoidance of boredom’, which rather accurately denotes the negative character of this kind of motive (Barnett et al., 1997). In sum, video games are appealing because they may enthral their users as a result of their interactive nature. From a motivational perspective, games are played because they may satisfy needs for competition and control, as well as a need to be entertained. At the same time, however, video games are appealing as a pastime, which allows the gamer to escape from ordinary life. None of the five motives for playing video games was concerned specifically with gaming as a social activity. However, it is conceivable that the multiplay options of some games add another gratifying dimension to the activity of gaming. Therefore, we extended the list of five motives for gaming with a sixth: sociality. This refers to the needs that are satisfied by playing together. This social motive could be studied in any context where multiplayer games are played. For example, when siblings and peers get 338 Downloaded from http://nms.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 14, 2008 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. Jansz & Martens: Gaming at a LAN event together to play (Orleans and Laney, 2000) or when anonymous individual gamers compete with others in an online game on the internet (Griffiths et al., 2004). Thus far, no one has studied gaming in the explicitly social context of a LAN event, where gamers join each other to play highly competitive games. Therefore, we planned a project to investigate to what extent LAN gamers reported the motives competition, control, entertainment, escapism, pastime and sociality. LAN EVENT: GAMERS AND GAMES At a LAN event, state of the art information and communication technology (ICT) is employed for entertainment purposes. Computers and servers are linked in a LAN, offering a high speed of communication. The local network at a LAN event is up and active for 24 hours a day, mostly on weekends or for a couple of days in a holiday period. A quality LAN has no lags or latencies as are encountered on the internet. The consequences for the actual experience of gaming (game play) are far-reaching: a LAN allows fast game-play, because the response time of the server and other computers is minimal. The LAN, in turn, is often linked to the internet (Wide Area Network, WAN). This high-speed access makes LAN events an attractive setting for other activities than gaming, for example, downloading films and software from the internet. Generally, LANs have a 100MB connection, which is about 1800 times faster that a 56K modem connection and 100 times faster than ADSL (1MB). In principle, all game genres can be played at a LAN event. For obvious reasons, LAN events are dominated by games with a multiplayer option. Among the multiplayers, FPS is the most popular one. Counterstrike is the paradigmatic example of this kind of game. It is immensely popular at LAN events all around the world (Fletcher, 2002; see www.counter-strike.net). Counterstrike provides the player with experiences that a trained counterterrorist unit might have. Players join either a terrorist or counter-terrorist force and are sent out on a mission. They must, for example, rescue a hostage, plant a bomb or defuse it, or escape from a particular building. The game is played from a first-person perspective, which means that the gamer sees the virtual 3D landscape through the eyes of his character (subjective camera position). Weapons and other types of equipment are available at a cost. Players can earn money while playing the game, but they may also lose money, for example when they kill a teammate. Counterstrike is meant for a mature audience. The Pan European Game Information (PEGI) rates it as a violent 16+ game and the American Entertainment Software Rating Board (ERSB) rates it as 17+, because of blood and violence. A gamer must practise to play Counterstrike well. Its game-play is fast, the sequence of events can be complex and it is rather difficult to operate the interface. Other FPS that are played at LAN events, such as for example, Team Fortress 339 Downloaded from http://nms.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 14, 2008 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. New Media & Society 7(3) Classic, Quake3 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein share with Counterstrike violent content and, in most cases, its level of difficulty. LAN events are the scene of virtual clan wars. A clan is a small group of gamers who play together as a team, for example as a counter-terrorist unit in Counterstrike. In competitive virtual ‘wars’ on the LAN they fight other clans, until the adversaries are put to death. LAN events generally have organized competitions with trophies to honour the accomplishments of the best clans. LAN events are popular, despite the increasing number of gamers who have high-speed access to the internet at home (using, for example, ADSL or broadband). Fast connections at home facilitate global online gaming, thus enabling individual gamers to participate in a gaming community or clan, irrespective of where they live (Griffiths et al., 2004; Stald, 2002). If we interpret the popularity of LAN events from a uses and gratifications perspective, it seems clear that LAN participants expect gratification from gaming at a LAN event which they cannot obtain through online gaming at home (Ruggiero, 2000). For most gamers it is quite an effort to participate. They must organize transport, move their PCs and screens to the event, risk equipment damage, pay an entrance fee and often endure rather primitive overnight facilities. It may very well be that the physical presence of other gamers and the possibilities of face-to-face communication make the effort worthwhile. In the UK, the LAN events organized by Multiplay UK underline the increasing popularity of this pastime. They began in 1995 with a first LAN event with 20 participants from a particular community of gamers, the Doom2 League. From 1999 on, Multiplay UK organized its LAN event under the banner of ‘i-series’. The i2 (1999) event held more than 200 participants; i3 (2000) exceeded 400 and in 2001, i4 attracted more than 700 gamers (Fletcher, 2002). Recently, Multiplay UK increased its number of ‘i’ LANs by organizing several events each year with a limited number of places available. The i21 took place in August 2004, with 1000 tickets available. In the Netherlands, the organization GameParty.Net grew from a small community to about 10,000 members in a couple of years and its website shows an expanding list of LAN events each weekend (www.gameparty.net). There are many small LAN events where about 15 to 30 PCs are linked, as well as some large ones. The Dutch Campzone series is an example of a large scale LAN event. It began with about 800 participants in summer 2001. Campzone4 (July 2004) attracted about 1700 gamers. During each Campzone episode, gamers get together on a huge campsite for a 10-day period. They bring their own tents, install their PCs or stay with their equipment in one of the larger tents provided by the organizers. The connections between PCs and servers in the different tents are established by means of a LAN. 340 Downloaded from http://nms.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 14, 2008 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. Jansz & Martens: Gaming at a LAN event METHOD Participants The field research for this project was carried out in July 2002 during Campzone2, where about 1200 people gathered to play their favourite games on a LAN. The list of participants showed that almost all visitors to Campzone2 were male; about 30 were female. Procedure Given the exploratory character of our study, we did not use a formal sampling procedure. Individual participants were approached with the request to contribute to our research by filling out the questionnaire. In some cases, the questionnaire was administered in a small group of people that happened to be sitting together. No one refused to contribute and many gamers expressed a particular interest in our study. We canvassed for one day and were able to compile a sample of 176 participants. Our sample reflected the unequal gender distribution at Campzone2: 170 men and six women. It took the participants about 20 minutes to answer the questions. At the end of the list they could fill in a form if they wanted to receive a summary of the results of this project. Measures The questionnaire consisted of two parts. First, a set of 17 forced choice questions about demographics (age, gender, relationships), the availability of computers and/or game consoles, the frequency of gaming, what their favourite game was, whether they were members of a ‘clan’ that played a particular game and how often they visited LAN events. The second part was a set of 28 scaled statements intended to tap motives. The participants were asked to express whether they agreed or disagreed with the statements on a Likert-type five-point scale (1 = disagree totally, 5 = agree totally). By the construction of items about competition, control, entertainment, escapism and pastime, we relied partly on Barnett’s Videogame Questionnaire (Barnett et al., 1997). For items about entertainment, escapism and pastime, we also checked the ways in which these motives were triggered in the established tradition of uses and gratifications research about television (Conway and Rubin, 1991). Relevant items had to be translated and rephrased in order to fit the context of a LAN event. For the sixth motive (sociality) we could not rely on previous research about video games, so all items about social motives were newly designed for this project. The final list of items was tested for comprehensibility at two small scale LAN events, with 25 and 40 participants respectively. Some items were rewritten, others were dropped. The revised final list of 28 items was administered at Campzone2. 341 Downloaded from http://nms.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 14, 2008 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. New Media & Society 7(3) The 28 Likert items about motives were subjected to an exploratory principal component analysis (PCA; varimax rotation) in order to find out whether the six motives that we distinguished were indeed given by our participants. The first step of our analysis resulted in a solution with eight factors that met the criterion of an eigenvalue >1. However, in this initial solution, 12 out of 28 items loaded >.40 on two or more factors, which made it impossible to interpret. The second step of our analysis aimed at a more parsimonious solution. We decided on the basis of the scree criterion to conduct a second PCA on the 28 items with a restriction of four factors (De Heus et al., 1999). This four-factor solution explained 46.5 percent of the variance and allowed for a theoretical interpretation. Three items failed to load >.40 on any factor and were removed from the analysis (‘go to LAN to escape from my family’, ‘a weekend without gaming would be boring’, ‘if I win on a LAN, it makes me feel good about myself ’). The four factors behind the 25 items were interpreted within a uses and gratification vocabulary as four motives (see Table 1): 1 competition – participants who scored on this motive went to a LAN event in order to win (10 items, eigenvalue = 7.35); 2 sociality – for the participants who scored on this motive the main attraction of a LAN event is to join likeminded gamers and friends (nine items, eigenvalue = 2.85); 3 interest – a LAN event is appealing because it allows the participants to gather information about games and gaming (three items, eigenvalue = 1.81); and 4 relaxation – visiting a LAN event is motivated by the possibility to escape from ordinary life (three items, eigenvalue = 1.47). This solution partly concurred with the motives we distinguished on the basis of earlier uses and gratifications research, but also there were differences. The motives competition, sociality and relaxation appeared as expected. Relaxation was used as a new label to embrace both escapist items (‘don’t have to worry about anything’) and pastime items (‘to relax’). Our four-factor solution did not reveal separate factors for control and entertainment. The control items from our questionnaire turned out to load on competition (‘good at gaming’, ‘improve score and skills’). The entertainment items appeared under the sociality motive (‘enjoy myself ’, ‘go for fun’). The interest motive was new in this factor solution. It embraced items which were originally meant to tap control (‘learn new things’) and social aspects of gaming (‘talk to people who really know’). Four scales were constructed on the basis of these four motives. A reliability analysis showed that Cronbach’s alpha was satisfactory for competition (.90) and sociality (.76). The alpha of interest rose to .65 after 342 Downloaded from http://nms.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 14, 2008 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. Jansz & Martens: Gaming at a LAN event • Table 1 Motives for gaming at a LAN event: Item loadings on a four factor principal components solution FACTOR 1# FACTOR 2# FACTOR 3# FACTOR 4# ITEMS COMPETION I go to a LAN event: To beat other gamers .849 To keep the upper hand over other gamers .816 To win games .802 To show everyone how good I am at gaming .768 To impress other people .729 To outstrip other gamers .728 Because I am good at gaming .700 To win prizes .591 To improve my score and skills .654 To feel important .473 When I talk to people at a LAN event, I recognize things of myself .245 At a LAN event I experience a bond with other people .206 I enjoy myself tremendously at a LAN event I make friends at a LAN event .261 I go to a LAN event because I prefer gaming with others to gaming alone .148 I go to a LAN event to meet friends/acquaintances .190 Time passes quickly at a LAN event I have a lot in common with other visitors I go to a LAN event for fun .103 I go to a LAN event to learn new things about games I go to a LAN event to talk to people who really know about games I go to a LAN event to do whatever I like I go to a LAN event to relax –.121 I go to a LAN event because I don’t have to worry about anything .205 Cronbach’s alpha .90 SOCIALITY .133 INTEREST RELAXATION .133 .107 .153 .114 .226 –.115 –.128 .163 .254 .100 .205 .244 .215 .251 .658 .290 .642 .291 .596 .587 –.225 .269 .231 .580 .218 .122 .528 .523 .175 .391 .502 .484 .151 –.313 –.198 .197 .290 .685 .110 .629 –.246 –.129 .765 .658 .188 .441 .65 .49 .106 .76 # Loadings < .10 are suppressed 343 Downloaded from http://nms.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 14, 2008 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. New Media & Society 7(3) removal of one item (‘when I game at a LAN event I feel like the main character’). Unfortunately, the alpha of relaxation (.49) did not meet the criterion for a reliable scale. Therefore, we dropped these items. RESULTS RQ1 asked: who are the visitors to a LAN event (in particular with respect to their age, gender, social relations and their gaming behaviour). There were 170 men and six women in our sample (3.5%). This is about the same range as the total number of women at Campzone2: about 30 women out of 1200 visitors (2.5%). The age of our participants ranged from 11 to 35 years. The mean age of the participants was 19.55. Both median and modus were 18 years of age. A majority, 81.7 percent, lived with their parents, although older participants generally lived on their own: we found a significant positive relation between independent lodging and age (Cramér’s V = .511, p <.01). The majority of the gamers were single: 72.6 percent of them did not have an intimate relationship. In this respect, it is important to note the weak positive relation between age and relationship. Older participants did have a partner (Cramér’s V =.211, p <.05). In addition, the significant positive relation between having a relationship and living independently indicated that gamers who had a relationship lived independently (Cramér’s V =.427, p <.01). All participants (100%) possessed a PC, in 80.5 percent of the cases located in their own (bed)room. The PC was not always their exclusive possession: 28.4 percent shared the computer with other people in the house. A small group also had an Apple computer (2.4%). Game consoles, such as Nintendo64 and Sony Playstations, were possessed by 31.4 percent of our sample and 18.3 percent possessed a portable gaming device (for example, Nintendo’s Game Boy). Internet access was common among these gamers: 98.2 percent were connected. About 70 percent had a fast connection by means of either broadband (46.7%) or ADSL (24.6%). ISDN was used by 13.2 percent of the participants. A rather small group of 13.8 percent was connected through ordinary analogue telephone lines. Game time The mean amount of time spent on gaming behind a PC was 2.6 hours a day. A handful of participants reported extreme amounts of time, with 10 minutes as a minimum and 12 hours as a maximum. We decided to categorize game-time in three groups, for practical purposes. For our decision on cut-off points between the groups, we could not rely on previous research because the game-time reported earlier was far less than what we found. For example, in a recent survey among American youth the mean game-time reported by adolescents was 20 minutes a day (Roberts et 344 Downloaded from http://nms.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 14, 2008 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. Jansz & Martens: Gaming at a LAN event al., 1999: 20). We established our own criteria and defined the following groups: • ‘heavy gamers’ (39.4%), who spend more than 2.5 hours a day in front of their screens; • ‘moderate gamers’ (27.7%), who played between one hour and 2.5 hours a day; and • ‘light gamers’ (32.9%), who devoted less than one hour a day to gaming. Among the heavy gamers, 14 gamers reported playing six hours a day or more (8%). An analysis of variance (ANOVA; varimax rotation) showed that there were no significant differences between age groups in the time spent on gaming (F (2, 167) =.902, p = n.s.). Game preference The visitors to a LAN event clearly preferred a particular type of game: FPS (65.5%). Among these, Counterstrike was the favourite (24.8%). Other games mentioned were Unreal Tournament, Quake3 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The gamers who did not express a preference for FPS often mentioned racing games, sports games and role-playing games as their favourites. Online gaming More than 50 percent of this group played their games online (28.4% indicated ‘always’; 23.3% ‘a couple of times a week’). Only 10.8 percent said that they never played online. Not surprisingly, there was a positive relation between online gaming and a fast connection to the internet (Spearman’s rho =.335, p <.01). The social context of gaming More than half of the sample actively participated in a gaming community: 54.5 percent of the visitors said that they were members of a clan. Also, most of visitors to Campzone2 were regulars at LAN events. About 40 percent of the participants had attended a LAN event more than six times. Apparently, Campzone2 had been able to attract a new audience, as about 20 percent of our participants were attending a LAN event for the first time (21.1%). In sum, the visitors to a LAN event are mostly adolescent men, although older age groups are present. Most LAN visitors are single, but older gamers have a relationship. The participants were well-equipped with a PC and often also with another kind of gaming facility. They happen to spend quite a deal of time on gaming and violent types of action games (FPS) are generally their favourites. 345 Downloaded from http://nms.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 14, 2008 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. New Media & Society 7(3) Motives RQ2 asked: what motivated the LAN gamers to participate in a LAN event? We specified this question with respect to the differences in motive between male and female gamers, age groups and particular groups of gamers. As a first step, we computed the overall mean score for each of the three motive scales. The motive sociality attained the highest score (M = 3.87, SD =.51), followed by interest (M = 2.89, SD =.89). Competition attained the lowest mean score (M = 2.38, SD =.78). The three motives were all moderately correlated at a significant level (p <.01): r (competition *sociality) =.37; r (competition *interest) =.31; r (sociality *interest) =.38. We used paired sample t-tests to test the differences between the three motives. The difference between sociality and competition was 1.49, which was statistically significant (t (165) = 25.565, p <.0001). The statistically significant difference between sociality and interest was .98 (t (167) = 15.428, p <.0001). Finally, interest and competition differed (.51), which was also statistically significant (t (166) = 6.513, p <.0001). We then tested sex and age differences in the three motives. However, the unequal distribution of men (N = 170) and women (N = 6) in our sample did not allow us to test gender differences in motives. Therefore, we only compared the mean scores of the three age groups. A multiple analysis of variance (MANOVA), with the three age groups as factors and the three motives as dependent variables, showed that there was no significant multivariate effect for age (F (6,322) = 1.60, p = n.s.). In the next set of analyses we tested whether the three motives were related to various aspects of gaming behaviour. Game-time The groups of heavy, moderate and light gamers were entered in a MANOVA as factors, with the motives competition, sociality and interest as dependent variables. The MANOVA showed a significant main effect for the time spent on gaming (F (6, 312) = 2.79, p <.05). Univariate tests then showed that this effect was significant for competition (F (2, 157) = 5.07, p <.01) and interest (F (2, 157) = 5.70, p <.01), but not for sociality (F (2, 157) = 2.28, n.s.). Post-hoc tests (with Bonferroni correction) showed that the significant differences had to be attributed to the distinction between the heavy and light gamers. Heavy gamers scored M = 2.58 on competition, and light gamers M = 2.13. On the interest motive, heavy gamers scored M = 3.09, and light gamers M = 2.56. Online gaming Next, we conducted a MANOVA with five categories of online gamers (‘never’, ‘sometimes’, ‘regularly’, ‘often’ and ‘always’) as factors and the three motives as dependent variables. A marginally significant main effect was 346 Downloaded from http://nms.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 14, 2008 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. Jansz & Martens: Gaming at a LAN event found (F (12, 480) = 1.63, p <.10). On the basis of univariate tests we concluded that the effect was significant for competition only, F (4, 160) = 4.874, p <.001. No significant effects were found with respect to sociality (F (4, 160) =.391, n.s.) and interest (F (4, 160) =.780, n.s.). The post-hoc tests (with Bonferroni correction) showed that significant differences in competition existed between the group that ‘always’ gamed online (M = 2.68) and those who ‘never’ (M = 2.03) and ‘sometimes’ (M = 2.12) gamed online. Clan members A MANOVA with clan membership as factor and the three motives as dependent variables revealed a significant main effect (F (3, 161), p = <.01). The univariate tests showed a significant difference with respect to the competition motive. Gamers who were members of a clan scored higher on competition (M = 2.53) than those who were not (M = 2.19) (F (1, 163) = 8.224, p <.01). The same pattern occurred for the sociality motive: clan members scored higher (M = 3.96) than non-clan members (M = 3.78) (F (1, 163) = 5.301, p <.05). No significant effect was found for interest (F (1, 163) =.008, n.s.). LAN visitors We then tested whether gamers who attended a LAN event for the first time had different motives compared with more frequent visitors. A MANOVA with the number of visits paid to a LAN event as factor and the three motives as dependent variables showed a significant main effect (F (12, 477), p = <. 01). The univariate tests showed that a significant effect existed for the competition motive (F (4, 159) = 3.819, p <.01) and sociality (F (4, 159) = 3.089, p <.05), but not with respect to interest (F (4, 159) =.802, n.s.). Post-hoc tests (with Bonferroni correction) showed that significant differences in scores on both competition and sociality existed between the group that attended a LAN event for the first time (N = 35) and the group of the most devoted LAN visitors (more than 10 times, N = 50). On the competition motive the first-timers scored M = 2.20, and the very frequent visitors M = 2.70; on the sociality motive the scores were M = 3.71 and M = 4.06, respectively. Favourite game We tested whether respondents who preferred a FPS game had different motives compared with respondents who preferred other types of games. A MANOVA with the preference for FPS as factor and the motives competition, sociality and interest as dependent variables showed a significant main effect (F (3, 151), p = <. 05). The univariate tests showed that a significant effect existed only for the competition motive (F (1, 153) 347 Downloaded from http://nms.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 14, 2008 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. New Media & Society 7(3) = 8.466, p <.01). The FPS advocates scored significantly higher on competition (M = 2.51) than those who preferred another type of game (M = 2.13), (F (1, 153) = 8.466, p <.01). The differences for the other motives were not statistically significant (for sociality, F (1, 153) =.703, n.s.; and for interest, F (1, 153) =.403, n.s.). Finally, in order to test whether social motives indeed formed a major motive to visit a LAN event, we performed two regression analyses. In the first analysis, we entered the three motives as predictors and the frequency with which the respondents had visited LAN events as the dependent variable. The overall model was statistically significant: R2 =.13, p <.0001. All three predictors were statistically significant, with sociality showing the highest beta (beta =.259, t = 3.09, p <.01). We then performed the same analysis with game time as dependent variable. This model was also overall significant (R2 =.14, p <.0001), but only competition (beta =.282, t = 3.44, p <.01) and interest (beta =.169, t = 2.05, p <.05) were significant predictors. In other words, sociality was not a significant predictor of the amount of time spent on games, whereas it was a significant predictor for the frequency of visiting LAN events. DISCUSSION Despite their massive popularity, the dominant representation of video games in mass media is rather negative. Often, the violent content of many games and the isolating consequences of enthusiastic gaming are cited as causes for concern. Gamers are presented generally as adolescent boys who prefer to immerse themselves in the virtual reality of games to the detriment of social interaction in real life. We conducted our research among gamers at a LAN event where they met in order to play video games both face-toface and online. Some of our results corroborated the stereotype of the somewhat ‘nerdy’ adolescent gamer, but other results clearly contradicted it. Our study confirmed that generally, gamers are young men. Our LAN gamers were between 11 and 35 years, with a mean age of about 19.5. Not surprisingly, the adolescent LAN gamer was single and lived with his parents. However, we also found that many older gamers had a relationship and lived independently. In line with the stereotype of the heavily-involved gamer, we found that a LAN gamer devoted about 2.6 hours each day to gaming. This means that he spends an evening, morning or afternoon on his hobby. This amount of time is far more than found in earlier studies about video gaming. Roberts and colleagues found that American male adolescents (14–18 years) spent about 20 minutes each day playing video games (Roberts, et al., 1999: 20). In a European survey, the mean game-time per day on a PC was about 25 minutes for boys between 15 and 17 years (Van der Voort et al., 1998). So, in terms of media use, the visitors of a LAN event can be characterized as ‘heavy users’ of their preferred media. The 348 Downloaded from http://nms.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 14, 2008 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. Jansz & Martens: Gaming at a LAN event popularity of the FPS genre among LAN gamers confirmed the dominance of violent content which is often emphasized in media coverage. It also confirmed the results of earlier research about male game preferences (Barnett, et al., 1997; Roberts et al., 1999; Valkenburg, 2004; Wartella et al., 2000). By contrast, the stereotype of the ‘nerdy’ adolescent who games in isolation was contradicted by the results of our study. LAN gamers turned out to be far more socially motivated than the stereotype suggests. The possibility to game in each other’s presence at a LAN event was the foremost gratifying property of LAN gaming: the social motive obtained the highest score among the motives found. In addition, the regression analysis showed that a high score on ‘sociality’ predicted the frequency of earlier visits to a LAN event. Apparently, actual face-to-face presence at a LAN event is more gratifying than online gaming on the internet at home. One of Swalwell’s participants emphasized the contrast between LAN participants and so called ‘lamers’ who just play on the internet: LAN’ers see each other face-to-face quite often and get to know each other. From a LAN’ers point of view, if you just lock yourself in a room and play games on the net and not get out and LAN then that’s lame. (Swalwell, 2003: 4) The interest motive occupied the second position among our participants. This indicated that a LAN event was appreciated also as a platform to exchange information about (new) video games and gaming practices. The competition motive was third. Given the popularity of violent and competitive FPS at LAN events, it was somewhat surprising that the general score on competition was not as high as the scores on sociality and interest. In this context, it is important to note that the competition score differed between the subgroups of our respondents. Three groups obtained a high score on competition: first, those who visited LAN events most frequently; second, the ‘heavy gamers’; and third, the gamers who said they ‘always’ gamed online. This suggests that there may be a ‘hardcore’ element of LAN gamers, who are clearly motivated as much by competition as by social motives. Conceivably, the relatively low general score on competition could be understood also as a consequence of public discussion about video games. Many participants told us they were weary of the media stereotype in which video games are immediately associated with violence and are presented often as a breeding ground for aggressive behaviour. Consequently, some gamers may have felt reluctant to express that they liked a LAN event because it allowed them to compete in the virtual world of a violent video game. The association between the competition motive and the frequency of LAN visits suggests a particular motivational pattern. It may very well be 349 Downloaded from http://nms.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 14, 2008 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. New Media & Society 7(3) the case that first-time visitors to a LAN event are motivated primarily by its unique characteristic, that is, the opportunity to play video games in a social context. If they like the LAN environment they will return, which is confirmed by our result that sociality predicts the frequency of visits. But, as they become regulars at LAN events, they may feel the urge to improve their position in the hierarchy of gamers, hence their higher score on the competition motive. It seems worthwhile to examine this hypothesis in future research about the development of LAN gamers’ careers. As a social event, LAN gaming has interesting parallels with older forms of game-play (Swalwell, 2003). A LAN event draws gamers out of their private houses into a public space of collective gaming, as older games invited people to play on the street and squares. A second parallel suggests itself with contemporary music culture. Enjoying music does not limit itself to the focal activity of listening, but also embraces participating in concerts, raves and parties. In the same vein, LAN events are the public instances of an emerging game culture. Both parallels underline that playing video games is not necessarily a solitary activity enjoyed by an isolated adolescent. The fact that 96.5 percent of the participants in Campzone2 were male underlined the fact that the reception of video games at a LAN event was as much a gendered phenomenon as other is media use (Van Zoonen, 1994). Many participants were members of a clan. These groups of gamers were exclusively male, as they were in Swalwell’s (2003) study. As such, the sociality of LAN gaming is of a masculine kind and seems to have a lot in common with, for example, football. It offers ample opportunities for male bonding, where social and emotional ties are based on sharing an activity, rather than on disclosing oneself in intimate conversation (Jansz, 2000; Parker, 1995). The practices of male bonding will contribute to a dominant manifestation of masculinity at LAN events. Bryce and Rutter (2002) argued that this male dominance is an important reason why the recent increase in female gamers on the internet has no counterpart in female presence at public kinds of gaming, such as game competitions and LAN events. Female gamers refrain from participating because they do not feel attracted to the dominant masculine gaming culture at these events. In addition, the absence of women may be due to the fact that LAN events are the stage for violent games, such as FPS. Female gamers generally prefer other types of games, for example, simulation games, mysteries and role-playing games (Cassell and Jenkins, 1999; Schott and Horrell, 2000). CONCLUSIONS Limitations Our exploratory survey among a group of LAN gamers allowed us to analyse the reception of this particular kind of mediated entertainment. It is the first study to focus explicitly on the gratification obtained by playing 350 Downloaded from http://nms.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 14, 2008 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. Jansz & Martens: Gaming at a LAN event video games in the social context of a LAN event. We used a uses and gratifications perspective for two major reasons (Rubin, 2002). First, because it acknowledges the active role of the media user, which is particularly relevant with respect to interactive media, such as video games (Ruggiero, 2000). Second, the uses and gratifications approach emphasizes the importance of the user’s motives in the process of media selection. In our study, we indeed found motives specifically concerned with using video games in the rather unique environment of a LAN event. Although our study underlined the fruitfulness of uses and gratifications for understanding an interactive media environment (Rubin, 2002: 541), its theoretical contribution is rather limited. Our survey covered separate motives that were assumed to exist next to each other. It did not address possible interactions between motives, nor did it cover possible contradictions between motives and how users came to terms with these contradictions. An interview study seems best suited to disentangle the details of the motivational network of LAN gamers. A second limitation has to do with our way of sampling. We approached our respondents at one LAN event, albeit a large one, and did not use a formal method of random sampling. The demographics of our sample turned out to be diverse, so we are not too concerned about biases caused by our informal way of sampling, but we cannot rule out the possibility. In any case, our exploratory results warrant further investigation of LAN gaming on the basis of random sampling of respondents at multiple LAN events. Prospects for future research about LAN gaming A first issue to study in detail in future research is the specific role of game content. We know now that LAN gamers prefer FPS, but we do not know why. Is it because of the general appeal of violent entertainment on young men (Goldstein, 1999), or is it because of FPS’s fast game-play and its subsequent competitive hierarchy? And is the violence just a side issue? A second issue is the relation between technology and gratification. Our study underlined the fact that often, the availability of a particular kind of digital technology is a pre-requisite for enjoying mediated entertainment. In the case of LAN gaming, the technology requires considerable investment from the participants. They must dismantle their PC at home and take it to the LAN event, where it is linked up. This often results in substantial tinkering with the technology before the network is up and running. Building a LAN together may very well be another gratifying aspect of the social interaction between young men at a LAN event. A third theme for future research concentrates on the participants. We now know what they like about LAN gaming, but we only have superficial 351 Downloaded from http://nms.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 14, 2008 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. New Media & Society 7(3) knowledge about their gaming activities at home. For example, does their online gaming at home proceed in the proverbial isolation of the attic, or do they join their siblings and friends when they enter an online battle? A fourth theme is particularly triggered by the gendered nature of LAN gaming. Evidently, it is exceptional for women to participate in LAN gaming, but this may be changing. If we are able to identify a female clan of LAN gamers, a detailed analysis of their motives for participation will be insightful, because we will be able to learn about how they cope with male dominance at LAN events. A final theme for future research is a systematic comparison of the uses and gratifications of LAN gamers with the uses and gratifications of gamers who play the same kind of games at home, but decide not to participate in LAN events. Comparing the scores of LAN participants on the motives sociality, interest and competition with the scores of gamers who prefer to stay home will allow us to differentiate further between the appeal of the game content and the appeal of a context which enables gamers to play in the presence of others. At this time, the results of our exploratory research about the motives of LAN gamers show that playing video games can be far more social than generally has been assumed. The unique technological properties of a LAN enable the participants to build a community of likeminded gamers through the activity of gaming. With the present popularity of LAN events, these communities will become important elements of the expanding game culture. Acknowledgements We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the gamers at Campzone2 who were so kind to complete our questionnaires. 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(1994) Feminist Media Studies. London: Sage. Vorderer, P. (2000) ‘Interactive Entertainment and Beyond’, in D. Zillmann and P. Vorderer (eds) Media Entertainment, pp. 21–37. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Vorderer, P. (2001) ‘It’s All Entertainment – Sure. But What Exactly Is Entertainment?’ Poetics 29(4): 247–61. Wartella, E., B. O’Keefe and R. Scantin (2000) Children and Interactive Media. New York: Markle Foundation. Windahl, S. (1981) ‘Uses and Gratifications at the Crossroads’, Mass Communication Review Yearbook 2: 174–85. JEROEN JANSZ (PhD, Leiden University, 1991) is an associate professor at the Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR) and the Department of Communication, University of Amsterdam. LONNEKE MARTENS (MA, University of Amsterdam, 2003) was previously a research assistant at ASCoR and is currently a researcher at Audax Media, Amsterdam. Address: Amsterdam School of Communications Research, University of Amsterdam, Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam, the Netherlands. [email: j.jansz@uva.nl] 355 Downloaded from http://nms.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 14, 2008 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.