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Discovering the influence of socioeconomic factors on online game behaviors

Published: 26 July 2015 Publication History

Abstract

With the rapid growth of popularity of online games in recent years, research has increased the knowledge about game playing behaviors and some demographic correlates, such as age and gender. Contributing to this line of research, we further examined the associations of socioeconomic factors (education, employment, income, and poverty status) and demographic characteristics (age, gender, and race/ethnicity) with online gaming behaviors (player count, total game sessions, total actions taken, and maximum level reached). We focused on one form of online games, Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs), which has received much attention recently. Analyses were conducted by extracting and linking the related data from the EverQuest II game logs, a popular form of MMOGs, and the summarized U.S. Census data for the zip-code areas of players from the state of Illinois (n=495). This study was performed on Gordon, a supercomputer hosted at San Diego Supercomputer center.
Results from multiple regression analyses indicated positive associations between education rate (Bachelor's degree or above) and employment rate (for 16 years or older) at the zip-code level with game playing behaviors. The impact of median income on gaming behaviors appeared to operate through education and employment. Although male players outnumbered female players, female players tended to play more games sessions and take more actions. Results also indicated that a higher percentage of white population in a geography area seemed to be negatively related to game playing activities. These study findings provides valuable information and highlight the importance of further research and theoretical development in this area.

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Cited By

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  • (2023)Design Features Associated With Engagement in Mobile Health Physical Activity Interventions Among Youth: Systematic Review of Qualitative and Quantitative StudiesJMIR mHealth and uHealth10.2196/4089811(e40898)Online publication date: 6-Mar-2023
  • (2019)Discovering Factors Associated with Online Gaming Behaviors2019 16th International Joint Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering (JCSSE)10.1109/JCSSE.2019.8864157(21-25)Online publication date: Jul-2019

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cover image ACM Other conferences
XSEDE '15: Proceedings of the 2015 XSEDE Conference: Scientific Advancements Enabled by Enhanced Cyberinfrastructure
July 2015
296 pages
ISBN:9781450337205
DOI:10.1145/2792745
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

  • San Diego Super Computing Ctr: San Diego Super Computing Ctr
  • HPCWire: HPCWire
  • Omnibond: Omnibond Systems, LLC
  • SGI
  • Internet2
  • Indiana University: Indiana University
  • CASC: The Coalition for Academic Scientific Computation
  • NICS: National Institute for Computational Sciences
  • Intel: Intel
  • DDN: DataDirect Networks, Inc
  • DELL
  • CORSA: CORSA Technology
  • ALLINEA: Allinea Software
  • Cray
  • RENCI: Renaissance Computing Institute

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 26 July 2015

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Author Tags

  1. MMOGs
  2. game behaviors
  3. online games
  4. socioeconomic factors

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  • Research-article

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XSEDE '15
Sponsor:
  • San Diego Super Computing Ctr
  • HPCWire
  • Omnibond
  • Indiana University
  • CASC
  • NICS
  • Intel
  • DDN
  • CORSA
  • ALLINEA
  • RENCI

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XSEDE '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 49 of 70 submissions, 70%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 129 of 190 submissions, 68%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2023)Design Features Associated With Engagement in Mobile Health Physical Activity Interventions Among Youth: Systematic Review of Qualitative and Quantitative StudiesJMIR mHealth and uHealth10.2196/4089811(e40898)Online publication date: 6-Mar-2023
  • (2019)Discovering Factors Associated with Online Gaming Behaviors2019 16th International Joint Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering (JCSSE)10.1109/JCSSE.2019.8864157(21-25)Online publication date: Jul-2019

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