Over 30,000 Gamers Have Taken Our Gamer Motivation Profile

Quantic Foundry's July 2015 post reports on the first weeks of uptake for its Gamer Motivation Profile, a self-scoring tool built on factor analysis of gamer survey data. Written by co-founder Nick Yee, it argues that the launch's most striking result was how wrong the team's expectations about social sharing proved to be, and it frames the resulting dataset as unusually large for social science research on gamers.

Within the first three weeks, more than 30,000 people, counted as unique IP addresses, completed the profile. Daily volume started at roughly 400 to 700 responses, then jumped to 2,400 on day four as users in the Philippines shared results on Facebook. Activity then moved sequentially through Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia, circled back to the United States, and reached Brazil, which produced 5,400 responses in a single day.

Beta testers had been strongly negative about a Facebook app, so the team built a platform-agnostic tool that let users share results through a web link on any network, blog, or email. Facebook nonetheless became the dominant channel: 83 percent of traffic came directly from Facebook, 8 percent of visitors shared their profile there, and the most widely shared profile drew 1,340 sessions.

For perspective, Yee notes that his earlier Daedalus Project never exceeded about 4,500 respondents in a single survey, which was considered substantial. The new dataset's size and geographic breadth let the team examine how motivations vary by gender, age, and country, and to validate and refine the model. A revised version of the profile tool was being released based on the new data. Reader comments show interest in regional, age, and gender breakdowns, which Yee said would be published in coming weeks.