New studies show that the best prediction models for how people select, play, and evaluate video games are those that include player type specific quality perceptions. Through a series of in-depth interviews and surveyed university students, researchers now believe they have designed a proper model for video game developers in classifying groups of players and enumerating specific features including their importance for players within a player type.

In “Player Types and Quality Perceptions: A Social Cognitive Theory Based Model to Predict Video Game Playing ”, an article from the most recent issue of the International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations (Editor-in-Chief: Dr. Richard E. Ferdig, University of Florida, USA), researchers Dr. René Weber, University of California Santa Barbara (USA) and Dr. Patrick Shaw, Michigan State University (USA) examine personal needs for playing video games and their symbolic representations for the user.

“It is a common observation that video game players do not think of their video games and their playing behavior in terms of psychological constructs and have difficulties being forced to describe playing motivations without prompt,” write Weber and Shaw.

The authors suggest that video game professionals need to think about specific video game features and players’ perceptions of those features. Further research is suggested to determine whether their model can be used to guide a game developer to produce better and more successful video games.

(Portions of this article were taken from the International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations - Editor-in-Chief: Dr. Richard E. Ferdig.)