Article:
https://quanticfoundry.com/2024/05/21/strategy-decline/
Archive:
https://archive.is/HHeRM
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In our blog posts, we’ve focused a lot on demographic cohort comparisons and how motivations are linked to in-game preferences, usually using slices of contemporaneous survey data. But because we’ve been collecting data from our Gamer Motivation Profile for about 9 years, we can also explore how gaming motivations have changed over a long period of time. In this blog post, we’ll deep dive into a long-term trend we’ve uncovered: over the past 9 years, gamers have become less interested in strategic thinking and planning.
The Gamer Motivation Profile
The Gamer Motivation Profile is a 5-minute survey that allows gamers to get a personalized report of their gaming motivations, and see how they compare with other gamers. Over 1.70 million gamers worldwide have taken this survey. The 12 motivations that are measured in our model were identified via statistical analysis of how gaming motivations cluster together.
What Are The 12 Gaming Motivations In Your Model?
For this analysis, we used the data from 1.57 million gamers who participated in the Gamer Motivation Profile between June 2015 and April 2024. Respondents from China were excluded because gamers in China have a very different gaming motivation profile (likely due to the historically more isolated development of their gaming industry).
Analysis Sample Details
In our analysis sample, 75% identify as male, 21% identify as female, and 4% identify as non-binary. The mean age is 24.5, with a standard deviation of 7.33. 12% identify as casual gamers, 68% as core gamers, and 20% as hardcore gamers. In terms of geographic distribution, the majority of respondents are from North America (46%) and Western Europe (26%). In terms of gaming platforms, 81% regularly play games on PC, 55% on console, and 34% on mobile. As a whole, the data collected via the Gamer Motivation Profile has consistently centered on the Western core PC/Console gamer market. Mobile gamers (especially casual mobile gamers) are underrepresented because they are less likely to identify as gamers and thus less likely to be interested in something labeled as a “Gamer Motivation Profile”.
What is Strategy in our Gaming Motivation Model?
In our motivation model, Strategy is defined as the appeal of long-term thinking, planning, and careful decision-making. Gamers who score high on Strategy prefer longer time horizons for planning and complex decision-making with many underlying parameters to consider (i.e., all the branching decisions and likely outcomes) seen in games like Europa Universalis and Total War. Gamers who score low on Strategy prefer more reactive/spontaneous gameplay and simple decision-making with few underlying parameters to consider, such as in games like Just Dance and Animal Crossing. A good metaphor for Strategy is the size of the whiteboard in your mind that each decision is taking to map out, think through, and optimize.
Of the 12 Motivations, Strategy has Changed The Most
When we looked for long-term trends across the 12 motivations, we found that many motivations were stable or experienced minor deviations over the past 9 years. Strategy was the clear exception; it had substantially declined over the past 9 years and the magnitude of this change was more than twice the size of the next largest change.
In the chart below, the dots represent the average Strategy score among the gamers who responded to the Gamer Motivation Profile each month between June 2015 and April 2024 (using a rolling 3-month window). Strategy is represented on the y-axis as a percentile, with the starting date (June 2015) anchored at 50th-%tile—i.e., the initial collected data is used to define the starting norm.
Using the starting norm (i.e., the 50th-%tile) as the basis for comparison, the average Strategy score has declined to 33rd-%tile as of April 2024. Or put more plainly, 67% of gamers today care less about strategic thinking and planning when playing games than the average gamer back in June 2015.
Why are we charting motivations using percentiles?
Motivations, like IQ and personality traits, are man-made constructs that are entirely relative measures. They have no natural 0-point values. They only exist in comparison between people. And thus, the most meaningful way to visualize them is to benchmark them against the known group average (i.e., a population norm). For example, it doesn’t make sense to plot IQ starting from 0 because 1) it visually diminishes the typical differences between people of normal IQ (around 100), and 2) 0 is not the minimum IQ value since it is statistically possible to have negative IQ.
Why Doesn’t This Chart Start at 0%
Because 0-%tile isn’t the conceptual origin in a psychometric construct; it represents one extreme end of the spectrum. In psychometric scales, the population norm (i.e., the 50th-%tile) is the more meaningful origin point.
Percentiles, Averages, and % Above/Below Average
The statistical relationships between these concepts are sometimes unintuitive to non-stats people. The following statements are all tautologically true:
- The 50th-%tile is the same as the population average (median).
- 50% of all people have below average intelligence.
- 50% of all people are above average in height.
- 50% of all people are below the 50th-%tile in height.
- 50% of all people are above the 50th-%tile in height.
How Big Exactly is a Drop to 33rd-%tile?
Both percentiles and psychometrics are fairly abstract concepts and the magnitude of a drop to 33rd-%tile can be difficult to grok. To help anchor this finding, here are some real-world magnitude equivalents using more familiar metrics:
- It’s the equivalent of all men age 20+ in the US losing 17 pounds in weight.
- It’s the equivalent of all adult men (worldwide) losing 1.34 inches in height.
- It’s the equivalent of everyone (worldwide) losing 6.75 points of IQ.
Reference Data for Height/Weight/IQ
Weight: See Slide 16
Height: Adult male height has a standard deviation of 7.59cm.
IQ: IQ has a standard deviation of 15.
Gradual, Persistent Decline That Pre-Dates COVID
When we initially had an inkling that Strategy had declined, we suspected that it was potentially due to COVID (and avoiding anxiety related to thinking about the future), but when we conducted the longitudinal analysis, several things stood out:
- The decline in Strategy clearly pre-dates COVID; it is noticeable from the earliest data collection periods and the trend line suggests it started before June 2015.
- The trend line also makes clear that what we’re observing is a gradual but very persistent long-term downward trend in Strategy. Whatever the cause, it’s likely not a sudden single historical event, but part of a larger, long-term cultural/psychological shift.
- The downward trend slowed down prior to COVID (right before January 2020), regained traction during the COVID era, and then has slowed down since COVID restrictions have been lifted. So there is a potential argument to be made that COVID exacerbated or prolonged an ongoing trend.
The Decline is Identical for Both Men and Women
We’ll look at potential confounds and data sampling issues in several ways. First, let’s break down the chart by gender. Note that in the chart below, we’ve anchored the starting point of both cohorts to 50th-%tile so we can more directly compare differences in change over time—i.e., men actually care more about Strategy than women so there “should” be a gap between the lines, but this would make it harder to visually see any differences in the longitudinal trend lines.
The decline in Strategy is remarkably consistent across male and female gamers. This also means that the overall finding would be the same even if the proportion of men and women had changed over time (which it largely did not; see below).
The Decline is Similar Whether We’re Looking At US or Non-US Gamers
The decline in Strategy is also very similar whether we’re looking at US alone or non-US countries. As with the gender chart above, the starting point for both cohorts is anchored at 50th-%tile to allow for better visual comparison of differences in the longitudinal trend.
The Decline Isn’t An Artifact of Sample Changes in Gender/Age/Gamer Type
While we can’t rule out the possibility that the observed decline in Strategy is due to a change over time in one of countless demographic variables among the gamers we sample, we can rule out this possibility in terms of the most likely culprits. The charts below show our gamer sample has been mostly stable in terms of gender, age, and gamer type (i.e., identification as casual, core, hardcore gamer).
While there has been a slight decline in age in the sampled gamers (and this could have been a likely confound), the correlation between age and Strategy is small (r=.06, r-squared = .004) and could not have resulted in the observed decline in Strategy.
The other reason why the decline in Strategy is unlikely to be due to a demographic sampling confound is because we know, from previous examinations of age and gender differences in gaming motivations, that other motivations (like Competition) are far stronger correlated with gender and age. Thus, any demographic confounds in sampling would have resulted in larger effects on those motivations rather than Strategy.
But Why has Strategy Declined Over Time?
There are many seemingly-related findings in terms of our media consumption habits. For example, over time, shorter YouTube videos have garnered a higher share of overall views. The duration of shots in movies (i.e., between each cut) has decreased from 16 seconds in 1930 to 4 seconds in 2010. The average time spent on a computer app window (e.g., on a Word doc before switching to a browser window) has decreased from 2.5 minutes in 2004 to 47 seconds in 2016.
In this light, the decline in Strategy is likely not an idiosyncratic phenomenon among digital gamers, but parallels the general reduction in attention spans observed by researchers in different fields.
But because all over-time comparisons are inherently correlational, it’s difficult to pin down cause and effect. While we often blame social media for our decreased attention spans, there’s a lack of concrete causal evidence for this. Of course, it bears pointing out that causal evidence for this would be difficult to produce since it’s unethical to raise children in artificial labs. Also, the shot duration analysis in movies is a counterpoint to blaming social media entirely: this downward trend in media attention span can be traced as far back as the 1930s, although it is certainly possible that social media accelerated the underlying trend.
Another potential hypothesis is that the increasing negativity, polarization, intrusiveness, and emotional manipulation in social media has created a persistent cognitive overload on the finite cognitive resources we have. Put simply, we may be too worn out by social media to think deeply about things. For example, higher engagement with social media is correlated with lower math and reading scores and poorer mental health among teenagers. Of course, again, these findings are correlational and not direct causal evidence.
Implications for Making Games and Understanding Gamers
Even if the underlying cause(s) cannot be identified, it’s clear that gamers have become less interested in strategic thinking over the past 9 years. It implies that gamers are now more easily cognitively overloaded when they play games and are more likely to avoid strategic complexity. This has implications for game design and marketing. Overall, gamers now prefer shorter time horizons to plan for (i.e., the number of steps and branching outcomes they have to think through) and less complex decisions that rely on fewer parameters to consider.
And for those of us who study gamers, typically in the more confined context of specific game titles/franchises, this finding may help explain observed changes among Strategy-related player segments over the past decade that we would otherwise have more likely attributed to game feature changes or COVID.
What Do You Think?
- Why do you think gamers have become less interested in strategic thinking and planning? Are there other potential causes that come to mind?
- Do you feel your attention span and ability to think deeply has changed since the emergence of social media and/or smartphones?
- Are there other documented changes in our media-consumption habits or cognitive metrics that you think might be related to this?
- Have you seen similar or related findings specific to gamers and games research?
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