August 04, 2008

Avatar Survey: Time Spent In-World and Customizing Avatar

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.

Posted by nicolas at 09:51 AM | Comments (4)

July 31, 2008

Avatar Survey: "Mains" and "Alts"

Before asking our participants detailed questions about how they chose to customize their avatar, it was important to assess whether or not they had one they considered to be their "main" identity (as opposed to alternate characters or "alts"). Indeed, if participants split their time between several avatars it would be more difficult to link their in-world appearance with their physical world demographics. Broadly speaking, we found that a large majority of users across the three environments focus their energy on one main avatar. The extended entry below presents our findings in more detail.

We found that many users own multiple characters on their accounts: an average of 8.08 (Std. =7.80) avatars per account. Specifically, WoW players have an average of 12.30 (Std. = 8.89) avatars and Maple Story players have an average of 5.22 (Std. = 3.91). Because Second Life allows user to create only one avatar per account, users have to create another account if they want to own multiple avatars. We found that each Second Life resident had an average of 2.92 accounts (Std. = 1.40) for creating other avatars. But it is worth noting that each Second Life resident designed on average 40.76 outfits (Std. = 36.62) stored in their inventory, so that they could quickly switch their avatar’s appearance to another one. While not strictly "alts" (the avatar's name remain the same), it illustrates the need for a flexible appearance - a need that can be fulfilled only by creating another character in game-based environments.

Although users have multiple avatars on their account, 90.1% of answered positively to the question: "do you consider any of your avatar to be your main identity?" There is little doubt users can readily identify which is their main avatar and which are their alts. There are minor differences across worlds: more Second Life residents can identify their main avatar (97.6%) than WoW users (87.8%) and Maple Story users (86.8%).

Finally, it became clear that users can not only identify one avatar as their “main” but also that they focus on it almost exclusively. Across all worlds, users spent 76.03% (Std. = 21.5%) of their total playtime on their main avatar and 18.19% (Std. = 16.96%) on their main alt and only 8.63% (Std. = 11.08) on other alts. There are significant but minor differences between the three environments concerning the time spent playing a user's main avatar (F=10.02, p <.001) and main alt (F=8.14, p <.001). The ratio of time spent on their "main" by Second Life residents (87.82%) was relatively higher than in WoW (70.45%) and Maple Story (75.79). WoW players allocated 21.64% of their playtime to their main alt and 10.26% to other alts; Maple Story players allocated 20.31% to their main alt and 7.75% to other alts; and Second Life residents only allocated 9.29% of their playtime to their main alt and 4.90% to other alts.

Posted by nicolas at 10:13 AM | Comments (0)

July 25, 2008

Avatar Survey: Age

Having considered gender in the previous post, we now turn to our participants' age. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the participants' age in the three selected games had significantly different means (F = 67.479, p <.001). The results indicate that Maple Story players (mean age = 18.12, Std. = 6.18) were significantly younger than both the players in World of Warcraft (mean age = 29.78, Std. = 10.48) and the residents of Second Life (mean age = 41.14, Std. = 9.64). In addition, the residents of Second Life were found to be significantly older than the other two games.

We were able to explore the issue of age in more depth thanks to the avatar screenshots uploaded by our participants. Indeed, users can choose to design their avatar to look younger or older than their real age. In our survey the participants were asked how the age of their avatar compared with their real age (1: not different at all, 2: mildly different, 3: somewhat different, 4: very different and 5: extremely different). We found that, according to their own evaluation, most users tended to make their avatar age slightly different from their real age (mean = 2.67, Std. = 1.29).

Moreover, a correlation analysis showed that the relationship between users’ real age and preferred avatar age appearance are significantly positively correlated (r=.231, p <.005). That is, younger users did not really care about their avatar’s apparent age, but older users preferred creating an avatar that appears different in age. Looking at the screenshots, it seems as if older users broadly prefer creating avatars that look younger than they are, sometimes by a very large margin. For instance, several SL residents aged 40 and above had avatars that looked like teenagers or young adults.

Posted by nicolas at 09:29 AM | Comments (0)

July 21, 2008

Avatar Survey: Gender Demographics

After several months of data collection we have begun analyzing the responses to our survey on avatar customization. A big thank you goes to the 180 participants who took the time to go through the questionnaire and provided us with some very interesting information! In the coming weeks we will be posting regularly about what emerges from our analyses.

In this post, we will start with some basic demographic data about our participants, in particular, their gender. While this is not directly related to avatar customization per se, it gives us a sense of how representative our sample is. Interestingly, our participants data broadly confirms the player profiles that have been reported by others in previous research and in industry data. Read on to learn more.

During three months of data collection, 180 participants (89 for World of Warcraft, 50 from Second Life, and 41 from Maple Story) have taken part in our online survey. The gender distribution of participants was 115 (64%) male and 63 (35%) female. There were two participants that didn’t specify their gender.

This distribution varied across virtual worlds: the male/female ratio of both WoW and Maple Story were approximately 70/30; in Second Life, it was 50/50. Our gender distribution for game-based environments like WoW and Maple Story is broadly similar to data reported earlier by other researchers; in SL, it looks as if the gender distribution is more balanced.

In addition to the gender distribution of users, an analysis was performed to understand these users’ gender preference when they are living in a virtual world. The avatar gender of each user was recognized by analyzing the avatar screenshot that they uploaded to our server. Within the 157 valid screenshots, there are 89(57%) female characters and 68(43%) male characters found across the three games. In WoW 43(53%) of the players were using a female avatar and 37(46%) players chose to have a male avatar. In the 36 valid samples from Maple Story, 20(55%) players have a male avatar and 16(44%) players use a female avatar. The avatar gender balance in Second Life is significantly different to the other two games. Within the 41 valid Second Life samples, 30 (73%) users played using a female avatar but only 11 (26%) users played using a male avatar.

We then analyzed gender swapping and found that 38 (24%) users played a different type of gender (across these three games) compared to their actual gender. Specifically, 34 male players use a female character and 4 female players use a male character in their virtual world of choice.

Posted by nicolas at 11:40 AM | Comments (4)