Fun and Games: Player Profiles

This paper presents findings about player preferences regarding characteristics of gaming experiences. It describes a quantitative investigation employing a survey with 27 items as a basis to categorise players in profiles, and it shows how the fun factors represented by the survey items relate to each other. The survey was applied to 634 students in Florianópolis (Brazil). A factorial analysis method was used to understand how the fun factors are associated with one other in the players’ opinions, and it generated six dimensions of fun, every one of which can be described as a way to have fun: (1) Improvement, (2) Distinction, (3) Immersion, (4) Decoration, (5) Empathy, and (6) Grotesque. A cluster analysis method was used to divide players into eight profiles, every one of which describes the preferences of a group of players who declared to have fun with similar aspects. The profiles were named as: (1) Competitive and Enthusiastic; (2) Competitive and Selfish; (3) Competitive and Overcoming; (4) Immersed in the Beauty; (5) Immersed and Selfish; (6) Distracted and Uninterested; (7) Quitters; and, (8) Friendly and Overcoming. The results are a useful source to reflect on game design and fun, and to consider topics such as violence, verisimilitude, distraction, socialization, as well as the multiplicity of modes of engagement with digital game.