Online Gaming Communities in Croatia

First author: Tea Šango (tsango@student.unizd.hr )Second author: Tomislav Rajković (trajkovic@student.unizd.hr )Mentors: Drahomira Cupar(dgavrano@unizd.hr ) and Josip Čirić(jciric@unizd.hr)

University of Zadar, CroatiaDepartment of information science

Introduction

• Phenomena of video-games.• No strict definition of gamers.• Several approaches.• Attitudes, behavior of gamers in Croatia.• Gaming communities.• Connections.• How do they perceive each other.• Characteristics of players.

• Research goals:– To see the demographic and psychosocial characteristics of

gamers.– How do they perceive players who play on other game

consoles.– How do they perceive other players of their favourite

games.– To see their attitudes towards gaming in general.– To check if there is any regularity considering personality

traits.

Methodology

Results• Age: 13-43 (N=166 M=23.90 sd=5.54 Shapiro-

Wilkis=.946 p<.01)• Males – 76,3% ; Females – 20,4% ; LGBTQ - 2,9%.• Median – 23 years ; Mode – 22 years.

• Major grups• Pupil/students – 45.7%• Employed – 36.7%

• Monthly budget• -35€ - 46.5%• 100€ - 17.0%• 500€ - 63.7%• +1000€ – 11.1%

• Entertainment• Computer games – 85.9% • Gathering with friends – 65.2% • Watching TV – 45.1% • Partners – 34.8%

• Breaking the stereotyse• Having a partner – 44% • Hanging out with their partner – 34.8% • Having a pet – 49.5%

• Living situation• Own apartment – 64.7% • With parents – 48.1% • With partner – 20.3%

• Most common real life social networks – 5 to 10 people.

• Most common platform - PC (desktop) 75.7%

• Favorite feature• Gameplay and multiplayer

• Least favorite feature• Community, graphics, brief gameplay

• E-sport - 50%• Getting their fix

• Buying on-line - 70.5%• Piracy - 56.7%• Bargain sales – 46.0%

Games

Confronting stereotypes

• Disagreement• „Typical gamer has no life beyond video games” -

86.2%• „Female gamers are marketing gimmick” – 60.2%• „Female gamers play video games casually” – 55.3%• „Cosplayers are weird” – 48.9%• „Female characters are over-sexualized” – 34.6%• „Female gamers are as successful as male gamers” –

13.1%

Hexaco• Honesty-humility correlated with writting

game instructions.• Extraversion correlated with meeting other

gamers in real life.• Openness to experience related to cRPG• Honesty-humility negatively related with FPS

and action games.

• Our participants are rather tolerant group of young people.

References• Arena, D. (2015). Video Games as Tillers of Soil. Theory into Practice 54; 94-100.• Ashton, M. C. & Lee, K. (2009). The HEXACO-60: A short measure if the major dimensions of

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Bobcatsss 2015 Proceedings and Abstracts, 92-96.• Griffiths, Mark D., Davies, Mark N. O., & Chappell, Darren. (2003). Breaking the Stereotype: The Case of

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sociokulturne karakteristike [Gamer typology in Croatia: Some sociocultural characteristics]. Medijske studije, 7(13), 25–42. doi:10.20901/ms

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• Seay, A. F. (2004). Project Massive: A Study of Online Gaming Communities. In Proceedings of CHI 2004, April 24 – 29, Vienna (pp. 1421-1424).

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Thank you for your attention!!!

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