PLAYER-ROLES IN MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE ROLE-PLAYING GAMES, AND PERCEIVED SKILL AND RELATIONSHIP BENEFITS, DIVERGE WITH SOCIAL ATTITUDES AND POLITICAL IDEOLOGY

Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) afford an enriching range of leisure, educational, and social opportunities. Individuals are motivated to play MMORPGs through a variety of psychological mechanisms. Drivers include a sense of achievement associated with progress through game structures, the excitement generated by immersive experiences and, in particular, the social rewards of interacting, and developing relationships, with other players and groups. Other data highlight player characteristics linked to hazardous patterns of MMORPG play that can be detrimental to health and well-being, sometimes categorised as ‘gaming addiction’. Strikingly, some of the most salient aspects of vulnerability to these problems include difficult social experiences such as loneliness, introversion, hostility to others as well as social disadvantage (e.g. unemployment). Collectively, these reflections highlight the possibility that individuals’ motivations to play
MMORPGs (to the benefit of well-being or otherwise), and the choices that they make within these games, reflect their broader social values and attitudes. However, almost nothing is known about how MMORPG play relates to social values, attitudes to others, and political ideology even though these factors may well mediate players’ gaming experiences and any resultant cognitive and social benefits.