“It Lets Me Fight the Bad Guys”: An Exploration Into the Factors Predicting Enjoyment of Violent Video Games

Abstract

In an exploratory survey that sampled video gamers, participants were asked to indicate why they enjoy playing their favorite video game. On the basis of ESRB ratings, we compare those whose favorite game is violent to those whose favorite game is nonviolent. Consistent with self-determination theory, the findings suggest need for autonomy and competence are important motivating factors. However, the findings also suggest fans of violent games differed from fans of nonviolent games in the degree to which arousal, liking violence, playing the vicarious hero, and playing the vicarious villain drive enjoyment. Furthermore, being able to play the hero and “fight bad guys” was a significant predictor of enjoyment of violent games. Implications for self-determination theory and theories of media enjoyment are discussed.

Keywords:

• Video Games
• Violence
• Enjoyment
• Self-Determination Theory

Notes

1. The NTVS studies define violence as follows: “any overt depiction of a credible threat of physical force or the actual use of such force intended to physically harm an animate being or group of beings. Violence also included certain depictions of physically harmful consequences against an animate being/s that results from unseen violent means” (Smith et al., 1998, p. 30).

2. The focus on intrinsic (vs. extrinsic) motivations stems from cognitive evaluation theory (CET; Deci & Ryan, 1985), which makes specific predictions about factors affecting intrinsic (but not extrinsic) motivations. Scholars supporting both SDT and CET tend to argue that video games primarily stem from intrinsic motivations (see Ryan et al., 2006).

3. In running the binary regressions, the two participants who indicated gender as “other” were not included in the analyses. Therefore, gender is a dichotomous variable in the binary logistic regression analysis (female = 1, male = 2).

4. We also explored the possibility that the low interitem correlation within the liking violence scale might be driving the unexpected negative relationship between liking violence and enjoyment of a violent game. However, when running “I like to see blood and guts” alone as the predictor variable, it still significantly and negatively predicts enjoyment of violent games (B = −1.24, p = .05, OR = 0.29). When using “I like the violence in the game” alone as a predictor, the relationship is negative but only nearing significance (B = −0.99, p = .08, OR = 0.37).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by UW Madison start-up funds.