Repeated Pleasures: Motivations for Replaying Story-driven Games

This study examines why people choose to replay story-driven video games, an area that has received little research attention compared with the broader literature on media selection and novelty preference. Drawing on a sample of 344 university students collected through an online longitudinal experiment, the authors investigate whether gaming motivations, trait transportability, trait imaginative engagement, and gaming experience and skill are associated with the intention to replay games. Replay intention was measured with a single five-point item asking how likely participants were to choose a previously played game over a novel one, supplemented by open-ended questions about replayed titles, changed decisions on subsequent playthroughs, and influencing factors.

The authors situate their work within prior research showing that replay experiences can increase presence and flow and that self-reported replay intentions are predicted by flow, while also noting that the mechanisms underlying replay selection remain unclear. Their theoretical focus is on narrative engagement as a potential driver of replay, with transportability (the tendency to become immersed in stories) and imaginative engagement (the tendency to add to stories through inference and imagination) treated as key individual difference variables. Motivations were assessed with a combination of established scales covering habit, entertainment, escapism, narrative, performance, social, competition, eudaimonia, nostalgia, mechanics, and aesthetics.

The study is presented as an early-stage report from a larger project, and the abstract does not yet provide analyses or results. Its scope is limited to a single European university student population, and its contribution at this stage lies in framing the research question and establishing the measurement approach.