In past data, I’ve tended to explore player motivations as a collection of components. While that method of analysis made it easy to compare age and gender differences, one drawback was that it was difficult to compare one motivation against another. For example, overall, are certain motivations more popular than others?

To get at this question, I asked players to read through a set of motivations and pick the one that was most important to them. The motivations were generated from earlier findings:

Achievement
- Becoming powerful
- Making progress
- Competing with others
- Analyzing game mechanics

Social
- Socializing with others
- Making good friends
- Working with others in a team

Immersion
- Exploring the world
- Role-playing
- Escaping from RL problems
- Customizing your character
- Being immersed in the MMO