The Psychology of Video Games

Fanboys. You don’t have to be a very experienced browser of gaming-related forums to see your share of discussions fouled by flames between people hysterically defending their favored game/console/genre/whatever and attacking everything else in sight. Some of it is deliberate trolling, for sure, but not always. There were (and still are) way too many Xbox owners ready to point and laugh at the Playstation 3′s lack of games. Or good luck trying to find someone who will stand up as a fan of BOTH Halo AND Killzone.¹

Why do gamers do this? One word: “social identity theory.”

Typical Fans

This theory explains (or at least predicted) the Great Console Wars of today and tomorrow. In one study, psychologist Henry Tajfel and his colleagues brought together teenage boys² and asked them to express preference for one of two sets of paintings, saying that their choice would place them in one of two otherwise arbitrary groups. Thus sorted, the boys then participated in a separate study where they distributed (fake) money to their fellow subjects under a variety of conditions. But here’s the key: each boy was told whether those to whom he was doling out the virtual cash were in “his” group or in the “other” group.

I’ll bet you can guess the results: subjects showed stark favoritism for people who had liked the same set of paintings as they had and who were thus in “their” group. Remember that like messageboard denizens, these kids had absolutely no self-interested reason to do this –they weren’t rewarded for favoring their group and they weren’t given any reason to expect their fellow group members to return the favor and be best friends forever. They just did it because they considered those strangers to be “us” and –perhaps more importantly– the rest to be “them.”³

Tajfel and his collaborators theorized that people have a natural tendency to construct identities based on group membership. Part of who you are –and how you communicate that to others– is defined by what groups you belong to. And we naturally want to belong to high-status groups, right? Okay, fine, but everything is relative; a group isn’t high status unless there’s a low status group for it to be contrasted against. So not only do some people identify themselves as Xbox fans, they attack Playstation owners in order to raise their status. This tendency is human nature, the researchers concluded, and a lot of other data support them. What’s more, we’re perfectly willing to do it at the drop of a hat.

Some savvy game designers even build this kind of thing into their game, the biggest example being Blizzard’s long-standing “Horde vs. Alliance” rivalry in World of Warcraft. Some folks will roll toons on either side of the divide, but many hardcore players will vigorously stick to just one side, and Blizzard happily plays this rivalry up in the player versus player aspects of the game.

One of the most interesting uses of social identity theory I’ve seen, though, was pulled off by Valve Software during their recent “Demoman versus Soldier” event for Team Fortress 2.

Valve uses social identity theory for fun and profits

Harnessing their flabbergasting ability to track gameplay stats through Steam, Valve promised a new in-game weapon for the class (Demoman or Soldier) that scored the most overall kills against his opponent during a certain time frame. The results were nuts as people chose sides, let rockets/stickies fly, and created renewed buzz for the game.⁴

I think the Soldier explained it best on the Official Team Fortress Blog:

Gentlemen, I have NO IDEA what this weapon is. I don’t even know if I’ll WANT it. But BY GOD, I know what’s IMPORTANT, and it’s that WE get it and the DEMOMAN DOES NOT.

This is psychological warfare at its finest.

1. And don’t even get me started on the whole “table versus jetski” debacle. [↩]
2. There’s the bulk of your console war soldiers right there, in fact. [↩]
3. Tajfel, H., Billig, M. G., Bundy, R. P., & Flament, C. (1971). Social categorization and intergroup behavior. European Journal of Social Psychology, 1(2), 149-178. [↩]
4. In case you were wondering, Soldier won the shootout, but just barely –6,372,979 Soldiers gibbed vs 6,406,065 Demomen. [↩]

Why do surveys overestimate the number of people experiencing the Xbox 360′s dreaded Red Ring of Death?

Lord knows I’m familiar with the Xbox 360′s “red ring of death,” or “RROD” as it’s not so affectionately called. I’ve encountered it twice myself. The term refers to what you get on the front of Microsoft’s console when its notoriously high failure rate kicks in and the thing stops working. This tends to be a touchy subject for Xbox owners, who tend to light up the torches and grab the pitchforks whenever it’s brought up.

Earlier this year the magazine Game Informer made a lot of headlines by reporting that according to their research, a mind blowing 54.2% of Xboxen crapped out, which is a failure rate traditionally reserved for mundane things like marriages.¹ Immediately across the Internet people started screeching this number as fact.

I should know about the RROD. I've had 2 myself.

But how much stock can we put in the survey and the methodology used to conduct it and interpret its findings? Sure, I think it’s safe to say that the RROD rate is high (Microsoft’s Peter Moore admitted as much publicly), but is that 54.2% overblown? (SPOILER ALERT: Yes. Yes it is))

Game Informer surveyed 5,000 of its print subscribers to gather the data. I couldn’t find a copy of the actual survey, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that there were no leading questions or other shenanagains that would influence subjects’ responses. The problem that persists, though, is related to what psychologists and others refer to as “sampling errror.” This is when the sample of data you collect is somehow biased, skewed, or otherwise not representative of the larger group of people that you’re really interested in (“the population” in inferential statistics parlance).

Presumably, what Game Informer wanted to do was infer that was was true of its sample (the readers it surveyed) was also true of the population of interest (all Xbox 360 owners).² What Game Informer did was send out a survey and then ask people to voluntarily respond. I can easily think of three reasons why this may have inflated their results:

1. People who had experienced a RROD and been justifiably pissed off about it would be more likely to respond to the survey (an example of what’s known as “self-selection bias”)
2. People who subscribe to enthusiast magazines probably play more games and thus put their machines through more wear and tear
3. People who subscribe to enthusiast magazines are more likely to be early adopters who bought initial runs of the console before Microsoft improved their process and reduced RRODs

Think of it this way: If you were interested in measuring the prevalence of drinking in your home town would it be wise to only survey patrons at bars?³

So what should Game Informer have done? The best way to eliminate sampling error is to survey people from the population of interest randomly and not rely on self-selection to be in the sample. Sending surveys randomly to people who have registered an Xbox 360 would reduce (but not eliminate) sampling error. Same for randomly surveying people in a shopping mall or cold calling them. Sure, this is hard and expensive and not always practical, but the bottom line is that if your research has flaws like potential sampling error you should note it, and reporters –even in the gaming enthusiast press– should be savvy enough about these things to note them when reporting on them instead of screaming “54%! 54%!” because it makes for good headlines.

As an example, look at this online survey done by CNET UK on exactly the same question. The survey has most of the problems described above, but the authors are good enough to cop to it:

This was a self-selecting survey, so it doesn’t represent a random sample of console owners. It’s likely that people whose consoles have had problems are more motivated to fill out the survey, but the results are still interesting when you compare the Xbox 360 to its competitors.

…The survey did not distinguish between the Xbox 360 Arcade and Elite versions, which are very similar, or the PS3 and PS3 Slim, which has only just been introduced.

So good on them. The next time you see survey results cited anywhere, think about how credible they are by taking sampling error into consideration.

1. Just kidding. I LOVE MY WIFE! [↩]
2. At least they got an adequate number; 5,000 is actually way more data points than you need for something like this [↩]
3. SPOILER ALERT: No. No you would not. [↩]