e-Sports: Playing just for fun or playing to satisfy life goals?

Highlights

• Clan leaders significantly differed in life goal power from not members of any clan.

• e-Sports players differed from casual players in life goals affiliation and diversion.

• e-Sports – a means of satisfying the need to belong through (teams, LAN parties).

• e-Sports – a means of satisfying the need for power (position of a game team leader).

Abstract

Purpose

e-Sports is an area of the game scene, in which computer game players specialize in a specific game, form game teams (clans), compete together in tournaments and meet at so-called LAN (Local Area Network) parties. The objective of this study was to compare the different types of e-Sports players from the perspective of their personality traits and explicit motives and to compare e-Sports players with casual players in selected life goals.

Methods

A questionnaire assessing life goals (Pöhlmann & Brunstein, 1997) and basic personality traits (Personality inventory KUD, 1986) were administered to 108 e-Sports players and 54 casual computer game players.

Results

In the group of e-Sports players, only clan leaders significantly differed in life goal power from those who were not members of any clan. Significant differences were also found between e-Sports players and casual players in terms of life goals affiliation and diversion.

Conclusions

e-Sports seem not only to be about playing computer games, but can also serve as a means of satisfying the need to belong. They do this by creating friendly relationships through membership in game teams and participation in LAN parties, or satisfying the need for power by upholding a position of a game team leader and determining its course of action.

Introduction

Playing computer games is a very popular way of spending leisure time. The ability to play against human opponents, which is the main aspect of multiplayer computer games, contributes to its appeal. According to the sc2ranks.com website, the strategic game StarCraft 2 has over 1 million players in Europe alone. The enormous increase in the number of players has led to the acceptance of computer game playing as a mainstream activity (Williams, Yee, & Caplan, 2008). In computer games, in a similar way to sports, it is possible to distinguish between competitive playing and occasional playing. The area of game playing in which the player’s goal is to continually advance, regularly train, compete, and participate in leagues and tournaments is termed as e-Sports. It is important to emphasize that “e-Sports as a phenomenon deserves to be investigated purely for its influences on society and culture” (Wagner, 2006, p. 3). So far, there have been very few studies which have dealt with the demographic characteristics, playing style, identity or motivation of e-Sports players for playing (Jin, 2010).

In one of the few previous studies, Wagner (2006, p. 3) has defined e-Sports as “an area of sport activities in which people develop and train mental or physical abilities in the use of information and communication technologies“. e-Sports represents a kind of a merge between electronic games, sports, business and media. It is necessary to point out the ongoing debate about whether it is possible to regard e-Sports as a kind of sport or not. Competitive gaming has some similarities with sports, such as regular training, team work or the perfect execution of tactics planned in advance (Hutchins, 2006). The term e-Sports itself is often replaced with other terms such as: progaming, ESport, cybersports, cyber athletics or competitive gaming. e-Sports is a phenomenon of mostly younger generations. An average player of e-Sports is between 15 and 25 years old and trains 3–4 times a week for 2–4 h (Müller-Lietzkow, 2006, Topalov, 2007). In contrast to casual players (casual gamers), e-Sports players mainly focus on one game, in which they specialize, train regularly and participate in LAN (Local Area Network) or online competitions. Many e-Sports players are members of game clans. These are organized teams of players that regularly train together and participate in leagues and tournaments (Griffiths, Davies, & Chappel, 2003). The game clan usually consists of a leader and other members. The role of the clan leader is to build the game team by recruiting new players, eliminating inactive players or those who have been involved in misconduct, setting player rosters for matches, devising game tactics and communicating with sponsors.

Most of the previous studies have been focused on the personalities of game players in general or on players of Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG). Many studies have found that there are differences in the personalities of the players in connection to playing different game genres (Borders, 2012, deGraft-Johnson et al., 2013, Johnson et al., 2012, Orr et al., 2012, Tekofsky et al., 2013, Williams et al., 2008, Zammito, 2010). One of the studies, which focused on the dynamics of the guilds (a guild is a version of a clan in the MMORPG environment), seem to think that the players’ behavior in the online world is parallel to their physical world, in which the degree of group activities is similar to that in the online world (Seay, Jerome, Lee, & Kraut, 2003). Thus, more sociable people should form more relationships in the online environment too.

Studies which have focused on e-Sports and LAN players have found that players’ most significant motive was the motive of sociability, followed by the motive of fun, and only then by the motive of performance (Frostling-Henningsson, 2009, Hobler, 2006, Jansz and Martens, 2005, Müller-Lietzkow, 2006). For half of the players, victory in the league or tournament was not found to be important at all (Müller-Lietzkow, 2006). e-Sports and LAN parties’ players are predominantly motivated by the desire for social contact, for which the party creates suitable conditions (the opportunity to meet other players, cooperation between them and mutual communication) and less by the desire for competing and winning.

Demetrovics, Urbán, Nagygyörgy, et al. (2011, p. 823) state that “we have to consider that these applications (online games) satisfy basic and concrete human needs in the conditions of our modern society“. For instance, to satisfy the need to belong (according to the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs), players can communicate with each other during the game, or form game teams for social interaction purposes (Teng & Chen, 2013). Thus, if games do not just serve the purpose of entertaining the player, and can be perceived in a broader context as a space that is able to satisfy the needs of the player, then it is also possible to expect different personality traits and motivation characterization of players specialized in a particular playing style.

Therefore, the aim of the current study was to examine the existence of differences between various types of e-Sports players; specifically clan leaders, clan members, non-members of a clan, solo players and team players. The differences in life goals of intimacy, affiliation, power, diversion and achievement as well as the personality traits of dominance and extraversion were examined. In addition, it aimed to look at the existence of differences between e-Sports players and casual players in the specified life goals.