Personality and Video Game Genre Preferences

What is personality?

Every person has a unique set of traits, beliefs, and schemata that make up the foundation of who we are. The American Psychological Association (APA, 2017) refers to personality as “individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving.” (para. 1). Nonetheless, depending on what aspect is being studied, the definition of personality may evolve. For instance, in regards to video game studies, Quick, Atkinson, and Lin (2012) describe personality as “a set of individual characteristics that explain how a person will perceive video game experiences” (p.13).

One of the most well-recognized personality dimension and assessment tools is the Five Factor Model (FFM). The five dimensions of the FFM can be remembered by the acronym OCEAN:

• Openness to experience

• Conscientiousness

• Extraversion

• Agreeableness

• Neuroticism

When studying an individual’s personality traits, the results of these dimensions are viewed in a scale-like format. For instance, someone who scores high on the openness to experience factor may be more willing to try a little known indie game, whereas someone who scores low on the same factor may opt to save their money for the new game in a series they are already a fan of.

Do certain personalities prefer certain genres?

Most gamers tend to favor a specific type of video game, such as first-person shooters (FPS) or role-playing games (RPG), but often play games in numerous other genres. So why is it that gamers will continue to play games from one genre, even though all of the games tend to stick to specific and similar game environments and aspects. Triberti, Villani, and Riva (2015) posit “people seek out entertainment that reflects and reinforces aspects of their personalities” (p. 2). Perhaps the fact that your entertainment center is full of fighting games reveals more about your personality than you know.

In an effort to learn more about how personality traits and video game preference correlate, DeGraft-Johnson et. al (2013) used the results of participants’ FFM to analyze video game genre preferences. Game genres included in the study were:

• Dancing

• Racing

• Fighting

• FPS

Researchers found that the agreeableness and extraversion traits were positively correlated with dancing genre video games. A negative correlational relationship between conscientiousness and FPS was exhibited. However, no significant results were found regarding game genres and the openness to experience and neuroticism traits.

In another study, Peever, Johnson, and Gardner (2012), similar to DeGraft-Johnson et. al, used the FFM to study participants’ preference for specific game genres. Numerous genre options were included: action-adventure, action RPGs, board/card games, casual, education, fighting, flight, MMORPG, music, party, platformer, puzzle, racing, real-time strategy, RPG, shooter, simulation, sport, text-adventure, and turn-based strategy.

Results showed that party, music, and casual games were positively correlated with extraversion scores, while RPGs and strategy games were negatively correlated with the same trait. The action-adventure and platformer genres were positively correlated to openness to experience. And lastly, conscientiousness was positively correlated with sport, racing, simulation, and fighting games.

While these, and numerous other studies, have methodological downfalls or inconsistent analyses, results provide researchers and game developers alike the chance to learn more about gamers and genre-specific audiences. Therefore, if an individual’s personality may affect the type of video game they prefer to play, it may also affect how an individual interacts with any specific video game.

References

American Psychological Association. (2017). Personality. American Psychological Association.

DeGraft-Johnson, C., Wang, Y., Sutherland, M. B., & Norman, K. L. (2013). Relating Five Factory 

Personality traits to video game preference. Human-Computer Interaction Technical Report, 1-15.

Peever, N., Johnson, D., & Gardner, J. (2012). Personality and video game genre preferences. 

University of Minnesota. (n.d.). Five Factor Model. [photo].