Avatar survey: Time spent in-world and customizing avatar

4 August 2008 | PlayOn authors archive

Gaming experience and time spent playing were not significantly different across the three environments. WoW players had a mean experience with this particular game of 2.15 years (Std. = 1.16). They played 4.36 hours per day (Std. = 2.32) and 5.53 days per week (Std. = 1.67). Maple Story players had a mean experience of 1.82 years (Std. = 0.98); they played 5.12 hours per day (Std. = 4.16) and 5.60 days per week (Std. = 1.88). Second Life residents had a mean experience of 1.71 years (Std. = 1.01); they played 4.55 hours per day (Std. = 3.56) and 5.91 days per week (Std.=5.91). Note that our respondents’ experience was not limited to these three environments: their total MMO gaming experience ranged from an average of 3.5 years for MS players to 4.4 years for WoW.

However, Second Life residents spent significantly more time (F=9.434, p <.001) customizing the appearance of their avatar (mean=92.75 minutes, Std. = 208.70 minutes/week), compared to WoW players’ 9.99 minutes (Std. = 15.185) and Maple Story players’ 12.95 minutes (Std. =16.18). This result makes it clear that avatar customization is a very important activity in Second Life compared to the game-based virtual environments – in fact, one could even argue that avatar customization is the game in SL.

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