The Science of
Gamer Motivation

Uncover what motivates gamers with our unique blend of social science and data science. Based on data from over 1.75 million players across 4,000+ game titles, our advanced psychometric model reveals what truly drives gaming experiences.

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The Science and Data Behind Our Gamer Motivation Model

Our Gamer Motivation Model

Data From Over 1.75 Million Gamers

Our Gamer Motivation Model was built using rigorous psychometric methods and insights from over 1.75 million gamers. Curious to learn more? Explore our resources:

  • Discover Your Profile: Take the Gamer Motivation Profile to get a personalized report and tailored game recommendations.
  • Explore the Motivations: Download our detailed PDF reference sheet to explore the 12 gaming motivations.
  • Learn The Science Behind It: Check out our 20-minute talk on how the model was created and key insights we uncovered.
  • Deepen Your Understanding: Watch our 2019 GDC talk for a comprehensive analysis of the 12 motivations.

An Empirical Model

Our motivation model was built using proven psychometric methods to uncover patterns in gaming preferences and create a reliable assessment tool.

A Large Data Set

With input from over 1.75 million gamers worldwide who have taken the Gamer Motivation Profile, our unique data set captures the demographic and motivation profiles of over 4,000+ game titles.

Actionable Insights

Our data links game titles and franchises to demographic and motivation variables, enabling deep audience analysis and providing evidence-based insights for game development and marketing.

What Makes Our Data Different?

Our respondents aren’t financially incentivized. Their primary goal is to get accurate gaming profiles and gaming recommendations for themselves. This dovetails with our goal of getting accurate data and allows us to avoid all the data quality issues that plague survey panel samples.

You can’t accurately infer gaming motivations from game features. Consider that World of Warcraft has many roleplaying features (e.g., extensive character customizations, many emotes, trinkets with social effects), but we know that very few WoW players actually roleplay–so few in fact that Blizzard has to specifically set aside a small handful of RP-designated servers. Just because a game provides a set of features doesn’t mean it’s successfully attracting gamers with the corresponding motivations.

Some data vendors use AI to inflate a small human respondent data sample to create a much larger data set. For example, they might collect survey data on a small handful of questions and then have AI confabulate responses to hundreds of other traits that were not directly assessed. We’ve seen companies frame this data hyperinflation as an “innovation” and use slippery marketing buzzwords such as “AI-assisted assessments” to obfuscate what they’re doing. But these aren’t innovations at all; they’re admissions of not having the actual data in the first place. It’s the same marketing trick as a drink labeled “made with real orange juice” which is technically true even if it contains less than 1% juice.

Dashboard Access to All Our Audience Data

Game Audience Dashboard

See our new dashboard in action in the video demo below. We walk through all the main reporting and graphing features of the dashboard.

Features At a Glance

  • Real-Time Insights: Access a convenient online dashboard powered by live data.
  • Extensive Game Catalog: Explore a database of over 4,000 game titles.
  • Robust Data Foundation: Built on insights from over 1.75 million gamers worldwide.
  • Build Audience Reports: Generate detailed reports for individual or multiple game titles/franchises.
  • Advanced Filters: Customize reports by gender, age, gamer type, and other player variables.
  • Advanced Query Settings: Apply weighted analysis and game intersection/exclusion settings, all with a quick toggle.
  • Dynamic Visualization: Use interactive graphing tools to explore related game titles.
  • Reverse Lookups: Identify games that match specific audience or motivation criteria.

Download a PDF overview of the key features.

Contact Us to Learn More About the Dashboard

Data-Driven Insights About Your Audience

Audience Reports

Empower Your Game Production & Marketing with Data-Driven Insights

Whether you’re refining an existing title or developing a new game, our reports and custom services provide actionable audience insights to guide your decisions.

Learn About Our Audience Reports

Here’s What Our Clients Are Saying

Clients and Testimonials

Trusted by 200+ Game Publishers and Developers: From casual mobile games to AAA franchises, Quantic Foundry has worked with over 200 game developers and publishers to deliver actionable insights to:

  • Identify target audiences for early game concepts.
  • Boost player acquisition and retention for live games.
  • Surface unmet needs in existing genres and games.
  • Prioritize features for games in development.

Thanks to Nick’s team we now better understand what motivates our players. We have restructured our production and marketing strategies based on their great insights.

Simon Sicko (CEO), Pixel Federation
Quantic Foundry’s audience report of Idle Clicker gamers helped us sharpen our communications by identifying primary player motivations. By aligning our marketing messages to these motivations, we became more effective in identifying and communicating with our players.
Eric Jordan (CEO), Codename Entertainment

Quantic Foundry’s Audience Dashboard helped us bring two projects through pitch and conception phases.

Maciej Binkowski (Head of Content/Publishing Director), Artifex Mundi

Quantic Foundry’s custom profiling service helped our game teams drive new features that we’re locking down for the next year or so. QF’s motivational framework also gave us concise and impactful language that could be consistently shared across game teams and titles, helping us understand how our players differed even within the same franchise.

Phoebe Tang (Analyst), PopCap
We were in the midst of exploring a new game concept and reached out to Quantic Foundry. They took the time to understand what we needed, and put together a customized report that was valuable and actionable.
Jeff Pobst (CEO), Hidden Path Entertainment

Quantic Foundry’s report provided many useful insights which made us re-think a few assumptions.

Matt Lowe (Lead Designer), Splash Damage
I was so excited about the release of the Motivation Insight Report. It is a great reference and provided exactly the information we were looking for.
Marguerite Dibble (CEO), GameTheory

A team that has been analyzing game data and innovating new ways of understanding gamers for over two decades.

Our Team

Nick Yee and Nicolas Ducheneaut each bring 20+ years of experience studying games and gamers.

Drawing on their extensive backgrounds in academic, commercial, government, and industry research, they transform game data into actionable insights for the gaming industry.

Nick Yee
Nick YeeCo-Founder & Analytics Lead
Nicolas Ducheneaut
Nicolas DucheneautCo-Founder & Technical Lead

Nick Yee and Nic Ducheneaut bring a unique blend of social science and data science expertise to Quantic Foundry. With PhDs from Stanford University and U.C. Berkeley, respectively, they began their collaboration in 2005 at the Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC). Their groundbreaking work in online gaming—ranging from developing empirical models of gamer motivations to mapping social networks in World of Warcraft—has resulted in over 40 peer-reviewed papers, including Nick Yee’s highly-cited paper on online gaming motivations (cited over 4,000 times).

Seeking to apply these insights and methods directly within the game industry, they joined Ubisoft in 2012 where they founded the Gamer Behavior Research group. Their fluency in different methodological approaches allowed them to combine and derive actionable insights from diverse data sources, which accelerated collaboration between design, marketing, and analytics teams.

In 2015, they launched Quantic Foundry to bring their expertise and insights to the broader gaming industry, helping publishers and developers understand their audiences and make data-driven decisions.

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