Additional Player Demographics

We’ve covered the basic demographics before - age, gender, hours played per week (which really haven’t changed much over time btw), so here we’ll look at other player demographics. I’ve never really asked about birth order before and the results were somewhat surprising. MMO players seem to be more likely to be the eldest in the family than would be expected from chance alone. This may be a confound with something else that I’m not thinking of, but I’m not sure what it might be. Post a comment if you have a guess why this might be.

I also asked players whether they were full-time students, full-time home-makers, or retired. Given that the average female MMO player is slightly older than the average male MMO player, the difference in the full-time student category makes sense. The data also showed that about 20% of female players and 5% of male players were full-time home-makers.

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I also looked into attitudes towards religion and social issues. As the graphs show below, religion tends to be fairly unimportant in the lives of most MMO players.

This trend is also reflected in the question about political leaning. Players were asked where they typically stood in terms of social issues, such as abortion, gay rights, and stem cell research. Most MMO players tended to be liberal-leaning, with female players describing themselves as more liberal than male players.

I also tried to see whether either of these two questions was related to class choice among World of Warcraft players. Differences only involved one particular class - Paladins. And while the difference was significant, it was also very small. Players who preferred to be play Paladins in WoW tended to be more conservative and religion tended to play a bigger role in their lives. Again, I want to emphasize that this was a significant, but small, difference.

Seasonal Fluctuations in Playing Time

There are several stats that I check often as basic guards for data sanity. So typically, I check average number of hours and gender distribution to make sure they are close to the numbers I’ve seen before. I had also found before that age doesn’t correlate with number of hours played each week, so I was terribly surprised when I checked for that in the most recent data set and found a significant correlation (r = -.13, p < .001). I plotted this out and indeed the correlation looked strong.

So I went back through the past survey phases one by one to see how long this had been the case. And then something more puzzling showed up. The correlation does not appear in data set from the phase before (r = -.03, p = .21), or the one before that.

Over the past 6 years, I had come to expect relative stabilities from phase to phase especially because the sample sizes tend to be large. And then I realized that this may be driven by teenagers and college students being out of school for the summer since I started the phase in early June, while the previous phase started in late March. I ran some numbers and playing time overall was higher in the June sample than the March sample (23.5 vs,. 22. 3), and most of the difference came from the 22 and under crowd (as the graphs show).

I then went back to last year’s data and found the same pattern. There was a correlation between age and playing time if a phase was run in the summer months, but not in normal school months. So what I used to say about the correlation about age and hours played per week isn’t entirely correct. Age is not correlated with hours played per week, except when school is out in the summer, in which case younger players do play significantly more than older players and there is a correlation between age and game-play.

The Gamer Habitat

I was pursuing several different ideas that led to this data set. One theme was the use of laptops vs. desktops. Within the MMO gaming sphere, there is a notion of “drawing spousal aggro” - spouses getting angry at gamers who spend the whole afternoon/night playing. In one of our PARC meetings, Bob Moore commented that the low technical requirements of WoW allowed gamers to play the game on a laptop next to their spouse while watching TV (i.e., increasing physical proximity via mobility), and might thereby lower their spousal aggro. But this interaction between form factor and social proximity led me to thinking about broader questions about whether gamers usually play alone (physically) or whether they usually play with someone else in the room. And given the number of gamers who regularly play with someone in their family, the next natural question was how many gamers play in a room where someone else is also playing.

Overall (N = 2692), 90% of respondents typically play on their desktops, while 10% typically play on their laptops. There were no gender differences, and the age differences were very mild (7% in the 12-17 group, peaks in the 18-22 age group at around 13%, and the rest averages around 9-10%).

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I started out by asking players how many computers they had in their household on which an MMO was regularly played. Overall, 45% of respondents had more than one computer in their household on which an MMO was regularly played. The gender differences that emerge make sense in the context of earlier data showing that female players are more likely to be playing with someone they know in real life (i.e., romantic partner, children, etc.)

Here is the graph for players who have more than 2 computers in their household on which an MMO is regularly played. Again, we see a gender difference, although this time it is only apparent after the 23-28 age range.

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This leads us to the frequency of MMO gamers who usually play with someone else in the same room (i.e., two gamers, two computers, playing together). It was striking that for female players in the 23-35 age range, more than half regularly play together with someone else in the same room.

Here’s another way to think about the issue. I asked players to indicate whether they usually play alone or with someone else in the room. With the numbers we’ve seen so far, it makes sense that female players are more likely to be with someone else while playing, whereas male players are more likely to be alone.

But overall, I think these numbers highlight the often social aspects of game-play, not only in the virtual world, but in the physical world. MMO gamers are playing together with other people in two separate worlds. Some may argue that people are displacing interaction with each other with a virtual and less real experience, but watching TV together passively seems to me to be the far more pervasive and less interactive phenomenon. Narratives from players who do play together also challenge the non-interactive argument. Their descriptions highlight how playing together in the virtual world can strengthen real world relationships.

Prior Gaming Experiences

For how many MMO players is their current MMO their first real video gaming experience, or is it more likely the case that MMO players have extensive prior experiences with video games? Players were asked about their prior experiences with other genres of video games as well as how often they played video games before their current MMO.

There were sharp gender differences with responses to both questions. Male players are more likely to have been avid gamers prior to their current MMO, while female players are more likely to have had less prior experience with video games in general.

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When asked to indicate their favorite gaming genre prior to playing MMOs, most players choose role-playing games (RPG), first-person shooters (FPS), and real-time strategy games (RTS). Male players were more likely to prefer FPS and RTS gamers, while female players were more likely to prefer RPG, city building simulations (SIM) and card or parlor games (CARD). In the graph below, the response options for driving and flight simulations, adventure games, and puzzle games received few responses and are omitted for clarity.

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Respondents were also asked about their experiences with MUDs/MOOs as well as table-top role-playing games.

Of all respondents (N = 1911), 54% have had experiences with MUDs/MOOs. Among those who have had MUD/MOO experiences, most of those experiences were rated as brief. Female players were more likely to have had more extensive experiences with MUDs/MOOs.

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With regards to table-top role-playing games, 75% of respondents replied that they have had experiences with them. Among those who have had experiences with table-top RPGs, male players were more likely to have had extensive experiences with table-top RPGs.

Experience with table-top RPGs is most likely among those who are currently between 29 - 35 of age - people who would have been teenagers in the 80s when D&D was popularized (and then demonized).

The overall pattern that emerges is that even though male players have slightly more experience with video gaming than female players, overall, current MMO players seem to have a fairly substantial background in games that were the predecessors of MMOs - i.e., table-top RPGs and MUDs/MOOs. In other words, it seems that MMOs were more of a logical next-step for many current MMO gamers than a truly new kind of activity.

Playing with Someone (Part 2)

In the last issue, we saw that many players play with someone they know in RL on a regular basis - whether this is a family member, a romantic partner, or a friend. There’s a related issue that we couldn’t tease out from that last dataset. Specifically, it would help to know how many MMO players are in romantic relationships to begin with, and of those, how many are playing with their romantic partners. In a sense, this is the inverse of the question that was addressed in the previous article. It also helps us make more sense of the percentage of players who play with a romantic partner. For example, we know that about 25% of players play with a romantic partner. But of all the players who have romantic partners to begin with, do a low or high percentage of them actually play with their romantic partner? And we could ask the same question for parents who play with their children. For both these questions, we need to know the base rates for players who have romantic partners or children.

These are the questions that a newer dataset has addressed. About 80% of female players and 60% of male players are in a romantic relationship. On a tangential note, this gives rise to an interesting “singles” imbalance. If we assume an 85:15 gender ratio and the noted singles rate, then for every single woman in an MMO, there are 10 single men.

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Respondents were then asked whether their romantic partner plays the MMO they do, and if so, whether they usually play together or separately. Of the female players who are in a romantic relationship, about 50% of their romantic partners play with them on a regular basis. Of the male players who are in a romantic relationship, only about 20% of their romantic partners play with them on a regular basis. The most striking difference is that the romantic partners of female players are about three times more likely to play the MMO they play than the romantic partners of male players.

A large part of what we’re seeing here is probably the “introduction” effect. Because a much higher percentage of female players are introduced to the game via their romantic partner, this increases the likelihood that a female player is playing with their romantic partner. The overall story is that not only are female players more likely to be in romantic relationships to begin with, but they’re very likely to be playing with their romantic partner.

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The differences for players who play with their children was less pronounced. About 28% of female players and 20% of male players have at least one child. Of the male players who have children, about 11% play the game with them. For the female players, this was about 18%. It’s interesting to note that the children of female players are more likely to be playing an MMO. I don’t have a good explanation for this though. Any thoughts?

Being a Leader

Players were asked two questions:
1) How much do you enjoy being in a leadership position?
2) Are you a guild leader?

Overall, male players find leadership positions more enjoyable than female players and younger players are more likely to enjoy leadership positions than older players (r = -.18), but this does not translate into any differences in actual leadership likelihood. Proportionately, female players are just as likely as male players to be guild leaders (between 14-16%). Also, there is no age difference between players who are and are not guild leaders. And among players who are guild leaders, there is no difference between male and female players as to how much they enjoy being a leader (p = .21).

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A multiple regression showed that the Achievement and Socializing motivations are the best predictors for whether a player enjoyed being in a leadership role (r-squared = .17). On the other hand, the Relationship and Mechanics motivations are the best predictors for who was an actual guild leader (but this regression model was much weaker, r-squared = .05).

The disparities between desired and actual leadership are interesting. Even though younger, male players find leadership positions more enjoyable, this does not bear out among actual guild leaders. The shift in motivations is also intriguing. Perhaps we’re seeing the difference between group leaders and guild leaders - the former more likely to be chat/social-oriented and the latter more relationship management oriented. The next step seems to be to explore whether guilds with male leaders are different from guilds with female players in terms of guild size and casual vs. hardcore.

In Their Own Words

Graphs and tables can get the point across quickly, and averages make it easy to summarize thousands and thousands of people. But the tradeoff is losing that sense of individuality and the wonderful granularity of who MMO players really are. I’ve been asking respondents to give me short profiles of themselves and I just wanted to share a bunch of them as another way of showing who plays these games.

What these short profiles do get across is the diversity of people who we bump into in MMOs. Pick any 4 of these people at random and think about the last time you were in a 5-person group. There aren’t many places in real life where such different people work together, but it happens all the time in MMOs.

Amelia is a 31-year-old self-proclaimed “computer nerd” from San Diego. She does graphic design as well as database architecture. She started playing WoW after her boyfriend introduced her to the game. Her main is a Dwarf Paladin. She’s tried playing Horde, but she finds Horde players “a bit too aggressive”.

Dawn is 29, a customer service rep for auto loans from Charlotte, NC. She’s played EQ for 5 years and met her husband from EQ. She’s recently stopped playing EQ but still “loves her druid”.

Alex is a 17-year-old high school student from California. He’s been playing MMOs since he was 11 when his father brought home a copy of EverQuest. At the age of 11, he was admitted to a high-end guild and took part in 8-hour raids.

Emre is 27, a grad student and lecturer in communication science in Berlin. In SWG, he’s a female Imperial pilot. In WoW, he’s a “holier-than-thou Human Paladin”.

Al is a 60-year-old project manager for EDS working on a Continental Airlines project in Houston. He started gaming in the 80s with table-top D&D.

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Jane is 46, a lawyer doing criminal defense work and juvenile defense from Akron, Ohio. She played D&D in college off papers mimeod from a guy named Gary Gygax. Before she graduated from college, their DM did manage to get an actual set of printed pamphlets. Nowadays, she plays EverQuest with 4 people in her family.

Bill is a 54-year-old firefighter for the US Forest Service from Oregon with 20+ years of firefighting experience. He plays EverQuest with his wife. He has a 51 ranger and a 47 rogue, but his wife says that “the rogue is more him”.

Alex is 19, a college student majoring in political science at ASU. He enjoys playing female characters because “little boys generally think you’re a girl and will be more lenient to you in bartering or just flat-out give you things.”

“Spark” is a 39-year-old computer scientist who specializes in security and works for a media and services company based in the Silicon Valley. She’s been gaming ever since Adventure on the mainframe around 1978, but only recently began playing an MMO - WoW.

Diane is 33, a professional mom from New Jersey. She got into Anarchy Online after a conversation with a fellow Lord of the Rings fan at a laundrymat. She considers herself as more of a role-player than a gamer. Her ideal game “would be one where role-playing was mandatory, that didn’t revolves around phat loot or grinding out levels in hack ‘n slash type way.”

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“Angel” is a 44-year-old documents editor for a policy research department and lives in Ewing, New Jersey. She started playing MMOs after her lover died - “It was something he and I had not done together, so I thought it would be the best way to focus on something other than the past. It's helped tremendously with the healing process.”.

Karen is a 50-year-old field service technician from southern California. She services high volume digital products and has been in the industry for 25 years. An ex-boyfriend introduced her to UO. She currently plays EQ2 with a romantic partner.

“Mander” is 35, a strategic marketing analyst from Los Angeles. She never took typing classes but now that she’s played MMOs, she’s really fast on the keyboard.

Lynn is a 45-year-old teacher from Arizona. She began gaming with table-top D&D. She was invited to participate in EQ’s beta and became a senior guide. That was also where she met her husband. Lynn has fun spotting the fake women in MMOs - “It's actually pretty funny to watch...to see how men 'think' we are and portray it”.

Shawn is an army communications officer from North Carolina. He got hooked by UO after watching his fellow soldiers play during lunch and at night.

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Tiffany is 37, a student in game design and development in Kentucky. She says that “a lot of people are amazed that I am a female gamer … Another thing that seems to amaze people is my goal to finish college with a degree in gaming and get a job doing it. They all think I’m too old to do something like that and I am determined to prove them all wrong!”.

Peter is 54, a garage owner who manages a small car repair workshop in Devon, UK. He says his interest in EQ, his first MMO, was “a natural expansion from playing Dungeons & Dragons”. He usually feels awkward when he has to explain what these games are all about to non-gamers, but he says he doesn’t care anymore - “I enjoy it and that’s enough”.

“Mausie” is 26. She describes herself as a “severely underemployed part-time student”. She’s playing Final Fantasy XI currently, but recently got a copy of EQ: Scars of Velious. Her reaction - “I have no idea how such a difficult, unpleasant-looking, and poorly-designed-GUI-having game such as that became known as EverCrack”.

Tim is a 25-year-old MBA student from Boston. He’s interested in going into the video game industry on the marketing side. He enjoys role-playing - “I always approach the game as a narrative, even if the story isn’t explicit”.

Claire is 35, a PC technician and digital photo restoration artist from Mountain Home, Idaho. She had lupus for 15 years and was unable to work. She says that “online games gave me a chance of socializing when I was unable to get out. It also gave me something to do to occupy my mind. I think I would’ve gone nuts without online gaming!”.

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Dan is 25, a home loans broker living in Irvine, California. He says he plays because “growing up we were all tabletop D&D kids and this is just the newest incarnation of the same fantasy. I have done most things possible in this life but killing dragons isn’t exactly something I can exactly do in real life”.

David is a 41-year-old embedded systems programmer. He develops low-level software for embedded devices. He’s a single father of two - one just hitting the teens. Both his kids play MMOs - “I spent a lot of time finding a good guild that we can all be comfortable with … I worked to become an officer of the guild so that I can help keep the guild an appropriate place for my children”.

Dustin is a 22-year-old server and cook for a Mexican restaurant in Yukon, Canada. His first memory of gaming is playing a 5-1/2 floppy on an IBM machine. In MMOs, he says - “I always go for the thieving, conniving, back-stabbing characters … weird?”.

“Jen” is a 30-year-old doctoral student in music. A significant portion of her research involves analyzing the music of video games. She began playing MMOs “to prove to my fiancé how stupid the games were”. They’re still playing together.

Nancy is 32, a researcher in a pharma/healthcare company. Her husband works in the IT department in the same company. They have always gamed together, but recently switched to WoW after it became a common topic of conversation in the lunch room at work. Every Tuesday night, 20 of them from work play together with their Tauren alts. They call it “Tauren Tuesday”.

Server Type Preference

There are 3 main server types in current MMOs - PvE, PvP, and RP. The following are demographic and motivational differences among players with regard to server type preference. I was most interested in the differences between PvE and PvP servers.

Overall, players who prefer PvE servers are disproportionately more likely to be female while players who prefer PvP servers are disproportionately more likely to be male. There is also a substantial correlation with age - younger players prefer PvP servers (r = .28). A multiple regression showed that the Competition and Mechanics (min-maxing) motivations are the best predictors for PvP server preference (r-squared = .32), as would be expected. Together, this suggests that players on PvP servers tend to have a higher proportion of male players and also tend to consist of younger players.

This has an interesting effect on gender-bending rates. The higher proportion of male players increases the chances that a female avatar is being played by a male players. On a normal WoW server where about 85% of players are male, there is a 50% chance that a female player is being played by a male player. If we assume that 90% of players are male on a PvP servers, there is an estimated 68% chance (about 2/3) that a female avatar is being played by a male player.

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With regard to preference for RP servers, there are no overall gender differences. Men and women are equally likely to choose an RP server if it existed for their game. Age isn’t correlated with RP server preference (r = .02). Unsurprisingly, a multiple regression showed that the Role-Playing motivation is the best predictor for RP server preference (r-squared = .37). So unlike PvP server preference, there are no demographic differences for RP server preference.

Play Spaces / Military Spaces

After the interview with Talon where the tension between casual and military-style guilds emerged, I was curious as to how many MMO players actually do have military experience. I asked respondents in a recent survey to indicate whether they currently are or ever have been in the military.

The MMO sample showed that about 17% of the male players and 5% of the female players have had military experience (including both veterans and active duty). This actually closely matches the US census information where about 13% of the population are veterans and .07% of the population are on active duty.

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So, about 1 in 6 players you meet in an MMO has had military experience. Even though the occupational distribution of veterans is the same as non-veterans (and thus presumably, 1 in 6 people we meet in real life at our jobs has also had military experience), the frequency with which MMO players are in groups with a player with military experience is still interesting to think about. After all, we seldom work in 20/40-person groups in real life. It leads one to wonder how much influence these players have over the player community where high-end encounters almost necessitate military-style management and leadership techniques.

Some players note the sheer tactical brilliance of players who have had combat experience and the benefit of having them to lead raid encounters.

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Others point out how the current MMO gaming mechanics are uniquely suited to players who have certain management and leadership skills that are acquired from military settings.

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And despite the resistance of many players to Talon’s comments, it does take highly-organized and highly-managed organizational structures to achieve the high-end encounters in many current MMOs - a degree of organization that many guilds lack. Yet even as many players resist that militaristic structure, it is clear that MMOs (like WoW) are structured such that these high-end raids are meant as the pinnacles of achievement. Those epic drops from Ragnaros or Onyxia are the carrots at the end of stick. It’s what your supposed to be working towards, right? Has your guild cleared Molten Core yet?

So what does it mean when game spaces become military spaces? But, of course, this is exactly the reverse of what’s really happened. Gaming technologies (computers, graphics, networking) are technologies that all emerged from military applications (many during the WWII and Cold War eras). So it’s not the case that our current play spaces are becoming military spaces, but rather, digital gaming has always been deeply-rooted in a military logic that traces back to the Cold War - command, control, and conquer - even in fantasy worlds of elves and dwarves. It is that underlying logic that necessitates military structures of command and organization. And thus, the irony is that even as we resist military structures in play spaces, the deep-rooted military logic of digital gaming necessitates their existence.

Playing With Someone

The media oftentimes portrays video gamers as being anti-social loners, but past data has shown that many MMOs players were playing with their family or with their romantic partner. Thus, it was clear that a non-trivial percentage of MMO gamers were playing with someone they knew in real life - that gaming wasn’t always anti-social and wasn’t always simply virtual. And it was also clear that friends, romantic partners, and family members were the 3 main categories of people that gamers were most likely to play with. But because I had never asked all 3 at once, it wasn’t clear how much overlap there was. To that end, I finally got around to asking all 3 at once and that allowed me figure out the percentage of players who are and are not playing with someone they know in RL. All the following data relates to whether a player plays (on a regular basis) with someone they know in RL.

First, let’s start with the MMO players who play with their romantic partners. Overall, 25% of players are playing with a romantic partner. As we’ve seen before, and particularly because of the gender ratio in MMOs, female players are much more likely to be playing with a romantic partner than male players.

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I then asked about family members. For the purpose of this particular survey, respondents were instructed that husbands/wives counted as romantic partners and not family members. Overall, 19% of MMO players play with a family member (again, after excluding romantic partners). There were only marginal gender differences. As for age differences, it seemed that the 23-28 group (post-college, early career) were a little less likely to be playing with a family member.

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To get a better sense of who these family members actually were, respondents were asked to name the relationship of family members they play with. Overall, the most often listed family member were brothers, followed by sons.

There was a clear gender split though. Male players were more likely to be playing with their brothers, while female players were more likely to be playing with their sons. Woven into this is also of course an age difference. It is the younger, male players who are more likely to be playing with brothers, and the older, female players who are more likely to be playing with their sons.

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And finally, respondents were asked whether they play with any friends that they know in RL. Overall, 70% of respondents replied yes. Gender differences seemed to diminish with age

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So now this data lets us get to the main question we had - overall, how many MMO players are playing with people they know in RL and how many are not? About 80% of players are playing with someone they know in RL on a regular basis. In other words, only about 20% of MMO players are playing a game and not playing with someone they know in real life on a regular basis. The following table shows the gender distribution. For example, the “Two” category means playing with people from 2 of the 3 categories (friend / family member / romantic partner).

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Also, playing with people that are known from RL tends to be an enjoyable experiences for most of these gamers. The only gender difference appears to be among those who play with a romantic partner. Female players report more positive experiences with their romantic partners than male players report. Overall, these findings do show that the online game space can be seen as a place where existing RL ties are being strengthened.

So even though some critics of online games focus on how ephemeral online relationships are, it seems that most players play with someone they know from RL on a regular basis. It also helps us see these online games as places where existing RL ties are being strengthened rather than simply places where only virtual relationships are forged.

WoW Basic Demographics

Apart from presenting the basic demographics from both RL (age, gender) and in-game (class, race), the goal of this short article is also to anchor the survey data with comprehensive WoW census data (from WarcraftRealms.com). While demonstrating consistency between the two sets of data doesn’t mean that there is no sampling bias with the survey data, it does make it more plausible that the survey data is representative of a large percentage of WoW players. This kind of comparison with perfect comprehensive data has been mostly impossible with my past data sets, so I’m glad that this comparison can be made to anchor the other articles in this issue of the Daedalus Project.

I’ll start with the in-game demographics and make direct comparisons with census data from WarcraftRealms.com from the same time period (June 2005). The distribution of the 8 races match up pretty well. With the distribution of the 9 classes, Priests and Warriors seem to be off a little.

In terms of Alliance / Horde ratio, the numbers match up pretty well. WarcraftRealms has a ratio of 1.6:1. The survey data has a ratio of 1.7:1 (646 Alliance vs. 373 Horde characters).

From the survey data, the average age of the WoW player is 28.3 (SD = 8.4). 84% of players are male. 16% are female. Female players are significantly older (M = 32.5, SD = 10.0) than male players (M = 28.0, SD = 8.4). On average, they spend 22.7 (SD = 14.1) hours per week playing WoW. There are no gender differences in hours played per week.

Who Introduced You To The Game?

Men and women tend to be introduced to the game in very different ways. Men are more likely to have found the game by themselves or through a friend, whereas women are more likely to have found the game through their romantic partners or a family member.

The difference in being introduced by a romantic partner is quite striking (27% vs. 1%) and may in part explain why female gamers tend to be older than male gamers. Given that people with stable romantic partners tend to be older, the age difference may be driven by this difference in how men and women are introduced to the game. This also goes along with the finding that female gamers tend to play with a romantic partner.

MMORPG Hours vs. TV Hours

MMORPG gamers spend on average 21.0 hours per week playing the game (N = 1996), and spend on average 7.7 hours per week watching TV (N = 1996). The national average for TV watching per week is around 28, which is what the above averages add up to. In other words, this lends support to the claim that time that was spent watching TV has been displaced by MMORPG playing. Female players are on average older than male players (33.0 vs. 28.4, N male = 1587, N female = 379, p < .001) and also spend more hours in the game than male players (22.3 vs. 19.0, p < .001).

Among male players, age correlates positively with hours of TV watched per week (r = .08, p = .003). Among female players, age correlates positively with hours spent playing an MMORPG per week (r = .12, p = .02). With both male and female players, hours spent playing an MMORPG does not correlate with hours spent watching TV (r = .03 and r = -.03 respectively, p’s > .05).

The following table shows average weekly hours spent playing MMORPGs and watching TV among MMORPG players. Of interest is the spike in play-time among female players over the age of 35. The trend among male players appears to be mostly linear.

Hours of Play per Week

The mean of the number of hours played per week was 21.9, and the median was 20. Players under the age of 23 tend to play about 2 hours more each week than players over 22 (23.2 -vs- 21.2, p = .01, significant, but a trivial difference with this sample size). There were no gender differences.

A multiple regression analysis using age, gender, motivations and personality traits revealed that the motivation to socialize and find group affiliation were the best predictors of hours of play per week. Even though the contribution coefficients seem small, for comparison note that between the lowest and highest scoring players on the Social motivation is a difference of about 8.5 hours played per week (from 17.1 to 25.5 hours).

Occupational Status, Marital Status, and Children

Overall, 50% of MMORPG players are working, 22% are full-time students, 12% are working and/or going to school part-time, 10% are unemployed, 3% are home-makers, while 1% are retired. The gender differences are presented below.

While about 36% of MMORPG players are married, there are significant gender differences.

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Even though part of the gender difference in marital status can be attributed to older female players in general (http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000194.php), it is also the case the female players (and women in the US in general) get married at an earlier age than men do.

Because the younger female age cohorts had the smallest sample sizes, it could be that the higher number of married females under 29 is skewed high; however, the chances of all 3 female age cohorts under 29 skewed high due to chance alone is fairly low. Female players are more likely to have started playing MMORPGs because of their spouses and thus this may be causing the number of younger married female players to be disproportionately higher.

About 20% of male players have children, while about 28% of female players have children.

Number of Accounts

Overall, 71% of the respondents have only 1 account, and 22% have two accounts. The rest have more than 2 accounts.

Female players were more likely to have a second account than male players (1.48 as opposed to 1.34). And age was positively correlated with number of accounts owned.

Education and Income

33% of the respondents were students. Here is the “highest education level achieved” breakdown for players who are and are not students.

Of those players who are students, 33% are pursuing a degree in the Technology area. Here is the annual personal income breakdown.

Gender and Age Distribution

In an earlier essay titled “Men are from Ogguk. Women are from Kelethin”, I argued that male and female MMORPG players have very different motivations and reasons for playing.

The graph above plotting gender against age highlights another very important gender difference. Male players tend to be between 12 and 28, while female players tend to be between 23 and 40. Rather than categorizing MMORPG players as male and female players, it perhaps makes more sense to think of the two main groups as younger male players and older female players.