If you build it they might stay: retention mechanisms in World of Warcraft

We analyze mechanisms of player retention and commitment in massively multiplayer online games. Our ground assumptions on player retention are based on a marketing model of customer retention and commitment. To measure the influence of gameplay, in-game sociality, and real-life status on player commitment, we use the following metrics: weekly play time, stop rate and number of years respondents have been playing the game. The cross-cultural sample is composed of 2865 World of Warcraft players from North-America, Europe, Taiwan, and Hong-Kong who completed an online questionnaire. We differentiate players in terms of demographic categories including age, region, gender and marital status.

[1]  Christopher A. Paul.  Welfare Epics? The Rhetoric of Rewards in World of Warcraft , 2010, Games Cult..

[2]  Robert E. Kraut,et al.  Project massive: a study of online gaming communities , 2004, CHI EA '04.

[3]  Bonnie A. Nardi,et al.  A qualitative study of Ragnarök Online private servers: in-game sociological issues , 2010, FDG.

[4]  Yuan Gao,et al.  Factors influencing user trust in online games , 2005, Electron. Libr..

[5]  Jane Yung-jen Hsu,et al.  Community-based game design: experiments on social games for commonsense data collection , 2009, HCOMP '09.

[6]  Debanjan Saha,et al.  A long-term study of a popular MMORPG , 2007, NetGames '07.

[7]  Bonnie A. Nardi,et al.  Strangers and friends: collaborative play in world of warcraft , 2006, CSCW '06.

[8]  Ryohei Nakatsu,et al.  Hardcore Gamers and Casual Gamers Playing Online Together , 2006, ICEC.

[9]  Shaowen Bardzell,et al.  The rogue in the lovely black dress: intimacy in world of warcraft , 2010, CHI.

[10]  T. L. Taylor,et al.  Power games just want to have fun?: instrumental play in a MMOG , 2003, DiGRA Conference.

[11]  Robert J. Moore,et al.  "Alone together?": exploring the social dynamics of massively multiplayer online games , 2006, CHI.

[12]  Scott E. Caplan,et al.  Looking for Gender: Gender Roles and Behaviors Among Online Gamers , 2009 .

[13]  Grantley Day,et al.  Online Games: Crafting Persistent-State Worlds , 2001, Computer.

[14]  Bonnie A. Nardi,et al.  My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft: Excerpts , 2010, First Monday.

[15]  C. Pearce,et al.  Author's Note: Special Thanks for Their Support to Emily Morganti and Heather Logas of Telltale Games; Games and Culture Volume Xx Number X Month Xxxx Xx-xx the Truth about Baby Boomer Gamers a Study of Over-forty Computer Game Players , 2022 .

[16]  Nick Yee,et al.  The Demographics, Motivations, and Derived Experiences of Users of Massively Multi-User Online Graphical Environments , 2006, PRESENCE: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments.

[17]  Celia Pearce,et al.  Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds , 2009 .

[18]  Nick Yee,et al.  Motivations for Play in Online Games , 2006, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[19]  T. Hennig-Thurau,et al.  The impact of customer satisfaction and relationship quality on customer retention: A critical reassessment and model development , 1997 .

[20]  Bob De Schutter,et al.  Never Too Old to Play: The Appeal of Digital Games to an Older Audience , 2011, Games Cult..

[21]  Panayiotis Zaphiris,et al.  Social learning in MMOG: an activity theoretical perspective , 2008, Interact. Technol. Smart Educ..