What Motivates You to Game?

[IMPress Polly]

I was looking at the findings of a massive survey of some 250,000 gamers worldwide this morning that examines what people's main motivations are for playing are and it got me thinking: this could help us all understand each other a little better! Here's what they found to be players' main motivations overall.

Men:

Competition: 14.1%
Destruction: 11.9%
Completion: 10.2%
Fantasy: 9%
Community: 8.8%
Strategy: 8.4%
Challenge: 7.2%
Story: 6.3%
Excitement: 6.3%
Designing: 6.2%
Discovery: 5.9%
Power: 5.6%

Women:

Completion: 17%
Fantasy: 16.2%
Designing: 14.5%
Community: 9.5%
Story: 8.5%
Destruction: 7.9%
Discovery: 6.7%
Competition: 5.1%
Power: 3.5%
Excitement: 3.3%
Challenge: 3%

People of Non-Binary Gender:

Fantasy: 22%
Designing: 17.3%
Completion: 11.1%
Story: 8.3%
Destruction: 7.8%
Community: 7.5%
Discovery: 7.3%
Strategy: 5.5%
Competition: 3.8%
Challenge: 3.5%
Excitement: 3.3%
Power: 2.6%

We can see here that there's more polarization in the play motivations of women and especially trans and $#@!-gendered gamers: greater distance between the top play motivation and the least common motivating factor. There's also more tendency shown here, as you go down the social ladder, for people to prefer fantasy over other things, which here refers to wanting to be someone else, somewhere else, which you might say corresponds nicely to lower self-esteem. There are also trends along age lines: among gamers under the age of 25, competition is the main motivation by a mile, while among players over the age of 36, it drops to 9th place as a priority, perhaps reflecting the tendency of games older players grew up with to be single-player experiences. Gender overlaps with that to some degree, as the median age of male players is younger than that of female gamers (33 vs. 37).

For myself personally, I'd say these are the primary and least motivations respectively:

1) Story
2) Discovery
3) Challenge

10) Competition
11) Designing
12) Destruction

That said, I don't necessarily think that all my priorities are compatible. For example, I find that story-centric games feel the most natural when they are easy because a high level of challenge tends to interrupt the flow of the narrative. I like a lot of those sorts of games (like Night in the Woods) on the one hand and, on the other, also really enjoy super tough games that don't really have proper stories so much as just simple premises (like the upcoming game Celeste). Concerning the stuff I don't like much, yeah I'm a bit of an anti-social gamer. I grew mostly on single-player experiences...and also just kind of hate the gaming community writ large. And, as far as designing goes, I get bored quickly with stuff like Minecraft and The Sims and Terraria and whatnot I'm afraid.

What about for you? If you play video games, what would you say are your primary motivations for playing? What do you look for the most in video games, that is to say?

(While this query is for everyone, I'm particularly interested in getting the responses of @Chloe, @Green Arrow, @Dr. Who, @The Xl, @FindersKeepers, @Safety, and @CreepyOldDude, as I find that those are the people I'm most apt to want to recommend games to and want to make sure that my recommendations in the future are tailored to your interests.)

[Safety]

For me, I would rank my priorities as:

1. Story
2. Destruction
3. Completion

I started out with FFVII and spent an ungodly amount of hours trying to get every single achievement that there was possible to get, then felt the later series were not as enjoyable. I then moved on to more first/third person shooters and military games such as GTA, Battlefield, COD, and now Wildlands. I really enjoyed Red Dead and am anticipating the release of Far Cry V.

[Green Arrow]

I would say I play primarily for the fantasy of it.

[Meh]

I like strategy games, I'm hooked on the Total War series. Destroying the Roman Empire is such an enjoyable thing to do.

[decedent]

1) Strategy
2) Completion
3) Designing

I mostly stick to games that have strategy. I'm a bit obsessed with completion, and I end up putting almost anything on hold until I finish a level.

[The Xl]

Online, competition, offline, story

[Ethereal]

Immersion, competition, social.

[Cletus]

"People of Non-Binary Gender:"

That is just ridiculous.

[Mister D]

"People of Non-Binary Gender:"

That is justridiculous.

Well, fantasy does appear to be their number 1 motivation.

Sorry, all, I couldn't resist, I will shut up now.

[IMPress Polly]

Before my thread is inevitably derailed further (thanks Cletus ), let me try and save it by adding my guy's preferences, as he wants to contribute as well.

Matt prefers:

1) Discovery
2) Strategy
3) Challenge

And dislikes:

10) Fantasy
11) Community
12) Competition

That makes sense to me, as his favorite games include No Man's Sky, Minecraft, Dark Souls (all), The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the original Mass Effect, and a bunch of Nintendo 64 games he gets nostalgic for (The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, and Star Wars: Rogue Squadron). He likes my favorites too, but many are a little shorter than he'd prefer. Still, I think it says something about a game's quality when the only complaint you can come up with is that you want more of it.