Once we have these 5 motivations validated, we can begin to look at how they relate to personality, age and gender among other things.

Male players scored significantly higher than female players on Achievement (T[6673]=14.8, Mmale(5939)=7.42, Mfemale(736)=6.65, p<.001). The percent of male and female players in each quintile of the Achievement factor is shown here.

Female players scored significantly higher on Relationship than male players (T[6673]=-11.1, Mmale(5939)=6.70, Mfemale(736)=7.30, p<.001).

Male players scored significantly higher on Grief than female players (T[6673]=11.1, Mmale(5939)=3.49, Mfemale(736)=2.96, p<.001).

Female players scored marginally, but significantly, higher than male players on Immersion (T[6673]=-3.99, Mmale(5939)=7.37, Mfemale(736)=7.56, p<.001).

Male and female players did not score significantly differently on Leadership.

Among male players, age was negatively correlated with Grief (r=-.32) and Achievement (r=-.23). In other words, older male players tend to score lower on these two motivations than younger players. Among female players, the correlations were much weaker and none were above (r=+/-0.20).

With regards to the Big-5 Personality Factors, Immersion correlates positively with Openness (r=.36), Grief correlate negatively with Agreeableness (r=-.44), Achievement correlates negatively with Agreeableness (r=-.24), and Leadership correlates positively with Extraversion (r=.35) and negatively with Neuroticism (r=-.23). Relationship doesn't correlate highly with any Big-5 Factor.

Finally, I correlated the motivations with hours played per week to see whether any of the motivations would be a good predictor of time spent playing the game. It was found that the Relationship motivation was the most correlated with hours played per week (r=0.24). The surprising thing was that this correlation held true to for both male and female players when the correlation was run again for both groups separately (r=.24 and r=.25 respectively). The average hours played per week for male and female gamers in each quintile of the Relationship factor is shown here. Notice that about a 10 hour difference in hours played per week for both male and female players can be accounted for by this factor alone.

None of the other motivations correlated at higher than (r=0.10).