Doing It Themselves! A Mixed-Method Study into the Motivations of Players to 'Create' in the Context of Gaming

This study investigates what motivates players to create content within digital games, focusing on two titles promoted as accessible creative experiences: Spore (PC and Mac) and LittleBigPlanet (PS3). Its central question is whether the user-generated content mechanisms popularized by these games alter the established uses-and-gratifications framework for game play. Data were gathered through a mixed-method design combining eight in-depth interviews and a survey of 97 respondents, recruited largely through Flemish gaming forums and snowball sampling, with a sample that skewed heavily male (91.5%) and toward LittleBigPlanet players.

The survey findings indicate that players are broadly omnivorous in their genre preferences, with first-person shooters, action-adventures, and racing games ranking highest. Among motivations, Challenge scored highest, followed by Arousal and a newly introduced Create construct, which correlated strongly with Challenge and Arousal. Over 81% of respondents had used a level editor and roughly one in five had contributed to game development in some form, pointing to substantial creative engagement within the sample. Interviews revealed differing orientations: some players create primarily to produce content, others consume user creations for inspiration or enjoyment, and some are deterred by a perceived quality threshold that new creations must meet. The authors acknowledge limitations stemming from sampling bias and the merging of two dissimilar games, and they call for further research into user-generated content across genres and into player and producer roles.