Affective ludology: Motivations for play massively multiplayer online roleplaying games

The gaming industry frequently utilizes results obtained from academic research studies in order to create games and hardware systems targeting consumer groups and balance supply and demand. The competition in the gaming industry has resulted in increases in the variety of games and necessitated companies to better understanding players and their behavior. Game play motivations include factors that drive players into playing games. In order to understand these motivations, many player type models have been proposed and discussed in the past twenty years. MMORPGs are concurrently played by millions of players worldwide and have been a popular area of research in game play motivations. Examination of previous research studies on gaming motivations in MMORPGs reveals that the Daedalus Project developed by Yee is the most comprehensive and prominent research project of its kind to date. This presented study investigates the game play motivations of Turkish MMORPG players over the age of 18.The research is based on the successful Daedalus project and differences in motivation for playing due to cultural differences is expected. The 39-item Daedalus questionnaire, which was developed by Yee within the project, was translated into Turkish and applied to 425 participants at the quantitative stage of the study using mixed interview method. Qualitative stage of the research was completed by applying semi-structured interview forms based on Yee's inventory to 5 participants with face-to-face interview technique. The hypotheses developed on game play motivations for massively multiplayer online role-playing games have been tested in the quantitative phase of the study. In the quantitative stage, the impact and effect of the identified dimensions on Turkish participants, the meaning expressed by them and the differences regarding players' perception were evaluated to help navigate the qualitative research questions in depth. The qualitative research results supported the obtained qualitative results by contributing to the interpretation of the quantitative research in parallel.