CSSII: A Player Motivation Model for Tabletop Games

Carlos Martinho, Group of Artificial Intelligence for People and Society, INESC-ID, Portugal and Instituto Superior Tecnico, Dep. of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Lisbon, Portugal, [email protected]
Micael Sousa, CITTA, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Coimbra, Portugal, [email protected]

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3582437.3582477
FDG 2023: Foundations of Digital Games 2023, Lisbon, Portugal, April 2023

Although multiple models have been proposed to explain what motivates different players to engage with digital games, the domain of tabletop games have not received the same attention from the research community. This work tries to fill that gap, investigating what drives us to play tabletop games. Based on the existing literature and in conjunction with tabletop game experts, we designed a questionnaire capturing relevant concerns both related to the analog artifact itself as well as to the context of play. Through principal component analysis of the responses from a diverse range of tabletop game hobbyists (N = 229, with an average collection of 99 tabletop games each), we propose a model with 5 dimensions characterizing the main motivations to play tabletop games that explains 80% of the variance of the data: (C)ompetitive interaction, (S)ocial challenge, (S)ensory experience, (I)ntellectual challenge, and (I)maginative experience. We discuss each dimension and compare our results to existing models on play motivations, and propose a 3-component version of our model providing a bridge to a broader interaction model. By understanding why players engage with tabletop games in their physical form, we hope to help the development of hybrid or digital versions of these games.

CCS Concepts: • Social and professional topics → User characteristics; • Human-centered computing → User models;

Keywords: Player Motivation Model, Tabletop Games, Analog Gaming.

ACM Reference Format:
Carlos Martinho and Micael Sousa. 2023. CSSII: A Player Motivation Model for Tabletop Games. In Foundations of Digital Games 2023 (FDG 2023), April 12--14, 2023, Lisbon, Portugal. ACM, New York, NY, USA 10 Pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3582437.3582477

1 INTRODUCTION

The number of people engaged in tabletop gaming has never been so high. Arizton's market study for 2019-2024 [1] foresees a growth of 10% in this period. A Technavio ’s market study [29] expects that there will be a 15% growth for the referred forecast period. The number of new game releases per year was boosting exponentially until the covid-19 pandemic. In 2020, the number of new game releases went back to the values of 2013, when considering the 10.000 ranked games [22]. Despite a growing number of research and conference papers [25], the “Board Game Studies journal” (focusing more on historic games), and the “Analog Game Studies” journal [30], the research on tabletop gaming has not kept up with the rising popularity of tabletop games.

Some authors state we are living in a golden age of tabletop games [3, 11]. When digital technologies dominate most aspects of contemporary life, going analog might be surprising. Whether this interest in analog gaming is related to the post-digital movement [5] is hard to prove. Even though players value these physical games, hobbyist players use digital platforms to buy, look for information and schedule gaming events [19]. The social aspect of playing multiplayer face-to-face games might be enough as a possibility. Nevertheless, what motivates people to engage with tabletop games is yet to be fully explored in research. We believe it is important to understand what players do, not only what they assume motivates them to engage in this activity, which can go beyond the act of playing itself and expand into the immersive context of the experience surrounding play [4]. We also believe these findings have the potential to bring new insights to both hybrid and digital game development.

What engages these players and makes them invest in tabletop games? Is it the need to disconnect from the digital world and reinforce the face-to-face social bonds? Or is it something else? Maybe a mix of motives? Woods [31] shows that social interaction is the main trait that drives users to play modern tabletop games, even within the Eurogame genre, which tends to be associated more with strategic play than player interaction. Digital platforms like “Board Game Geek”1 (BGG) play a major role in the tabletop hobbyist community [14, 22]. Created in 2000, BGG has become the primary database for tabletop games, organizing information and enabling forums that foster social events for gaming (local, regional, national, and international).

The world of tabletop gaming is composed of different sorts of sub or side hobbies (hobbies within the hobby). The behaviour of a typical hobby gamer differs from a casual player who only plays mass-market tabletop games or tends to play introductory-level hobby games sporadically. A hobby gamer values many things beyond the act of playing itself [4, 19, 31]. These players may cherish the experiences of discovering new games (including new game systems and game mechanisms), collecting games, customising their games (miniatures and parts), photographing game components, talking, writing articles, producing videos and stories about the games. All this is relevant, but the social activities are what built this hobby community. These social and external game activities highlight a different spirit and objective from a traditional gamer who, when buying a game, just wants to play it. Hobby gamers spent much time discussing both the design and concepts of tabletop games, sometimes more than playing the actual games.

In an analog game, the player's agency tends to be higher. Without direct player activation of the game mechanisms, the game would not function [6, 27, 36]. An engaging tabletop game depends as much on the design as on the players and the context of play [8]. In-game conditions are defined by the game designers, while out-of-game conditions depend on the social and physical context where the game is played. Within the same game, players can experience immersion differently. And even when the game and the players are the same, the context and background might have an influence. Ignoring player profiles and the context of play diminishes the success of understanding why players play tabletop games.

Despite rapid technological advancements, several families consider it is better to connect and bond over a tabletop game [1]. Tabletop games are considered as one of the best ways to leave aside electronic gadgets and devices, which are otherwise keeping modern-day families busy, and get them together over an ‘interesting’ game. Or should we say an ‘engaging’ game with a duration, narrative, interactions and complexity suited to each family? Similarly, a group of friends who meet in a social environment can choose to play a tabletop game instead of the usual electronic console games, having fun [4]. For those players keener to meet new people, tabletop games can also be played with strangers during social gatherings, board game cafés or other public spaces. The games can act as social nudging and foster the sense of being part of a local community [19].

On the other hand, people who like to be at home alone can find in tabletop games engaging activities. It can be a way to work their mind to solve challenges and explore new game systems and fictional settings. Those who play alone may also do so because they like to take their time playing, exploring a new game or learning how to play [26]. Additionally, there are solo modes in several games, a phenomenon that increased during the covid-19 pandemic. A person with little confidence to play can explore different strategies without the feeling of being observed or surrounded by the expectations of those who know her. Adding to the exploration, the lack of companionship and the need to learn the game and then teach other players how to play it are possible reasons for playing solo. From the designer's perspective, solo play is inherently part of the initial playtesting and is usually present in alpha prototyping.

Although research on tabletop gaming became more diverse in the last two decades, there are research points still open for study, namely when considering the motivation to engage with this activity. Since the experience of a tabletop game is inherently personal and different for each player, it is important to understand the different factors that motivate different players to play and create a model that not only provides an answer to this question but also helps design better tabletop game experiences and inspire new developments for hybrid and digital platforms.

In this work, we research how the importance of different dimensions of play are correlated within the population of hobbyist tabletop players and propose a model that captures the essence of these correlations into a player profile. Using a series of questionnaires, we gathered data on what hobbyist players value the most in the experience of playing a tabletop game, and through principal component analysis, reduced the aligned motivations into their main components, which resulted into the 5 main dimensions that compose our model (CSSII): (C)ompetitive interaction, (S)ocial challenge, (S)ensory experience, (I)ntellectual challenge,and (I)maginative experience.

2 BACKGROUND AND RELATED WORK

We define a tabletop game as a game played with a known number of players, usually on a game board, a table or in a shared surface and collective space, both physical and living in the players’ imagination2. In the last three decades, many game design innovations transformed traditional traits of tabletop games [25]. If we are living in this golden age of tabletop gaming, the hobby game movement must be among the main causes [4, 11]. New game mechanisms are constantly being developed and explored in new game releases, being able to engage specific player profiles according to the type of experiences they foster (e.g., creativity, collaboration, etc.) [24, 37]. Contemporary tabletop games can be turn-based or played in real-time, have many pieces and components, or just cards with engaging drawing to stimulate storytelling. Even solo play is a growing trend in board gaming [26]. Usually, what differentiates these analog games from digital games is the face-to-face interactions and the social contract that always leads to some forms of collaboration (even in wargames). Besides respecting the rules, players commit themselves to the game chores, and in some cases, house ruling and modifications emerge [32, 35, 36]. These possibilities demand high player agency and collaboration.

Games deliver experiences [21]. It is this nature of games that allows considering that games might be fun [13] but perceived differently from player to player. This means that a fun experience can vary from player to player. Players are engaged differently by different games because they allow them to do and explore different experiences [37]. We intend to explore what kind of experiences engages tabletop player that other types of games do not, or do in a different way.

Each game has its characteristics and can deliver different experiences; therefore, it will attract different players (e.g., an introverted player will most likely not play/like a game that requires social interaction). So, are there tabletop characteristics that can engage some specific types of players better than others? Demanding player agency, the need to activate the game system, the nuances of social contracts in multiplayer games, playing solo without the stress of downtime and waiting for the others while testing strategies, exploring chaotic game state changes from multiplayer interactions, playing with special game components, add-ons and in a physical atmosphere are all important dimensions of tabletop gaming? To identify what engages players we must first define the characteristics and typologies of player profiles.

A player type model is an attempt to categorise players into different player types by identifying characteristics that players exhibit within games [7]. A motivation model allows us to understand players’ reasons to play a game, which may provide a research base for our goal. The next subsections present motivation models that have been proposed in the literature for video games and tabletop games that are particularly relevant in the context of this work.

2.1 Motivation Models for Video Games

Most motivation models in the literature are targeted at video games such as Bartle's “Hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades” [2], Brainhex [17] and GMP [9] and although most of their characteristics are specific to digital games, there are some aspects in common with analog games which helped us structure our model.

Bartle brought us one of the first and most used player models, classifying a player's actions in relation to their individual preferences. Bartle's study [2] analyzed the interaction patterns and four different types of players were found. The four player types are Achiever, Killer, Explorer, and Socializer which are particularly relevant to Massive Multiplayer Online games but not always to other game genres.

Yee continued the work by Bartle through a long term study of players in Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games. While Bartle assumed that motivations for playing suppressed other types of play and that the four types are independent, at the time, this had not been empirically tested [33]. Yee's motivation for the study was to explore how players are motivated and if there are demographic differences to the players’ motivation in relation to the usage patterns and in-game behaviours. Yee used a factor analytical approach to create an empirically grounded player motivation model, the GMP, by generating an inventory of motivations gathered from a literary review of existing motivational models, such as the Five Factor Model (FFM) [34]. In the GMP, there are three high-level motivations, namely Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience, but these can be divided into six middle-level motivations which are Action and Social, Mastery and Achievement, Immersion and Creativity. Then each one of these can be divided into two low-level motivations [33].

2.2 Motivation Models for Tabletop Games

The Tabletop Gaming Motivations Inventory (TGMI) [12] and the Board Game Motivation Profile (BGMP) [10] are the main studies targeted at tabletop games that helped us define the starting dimensions of our model.

In the first study [12], Kosa and Spronck developed a tabletop gaming motivation questionnaire (TGMI) based on the literature on video gaming motivations. Their questionnaire has 14 dimensions: Customization, Escapism, Relationships, Completion, Story, Socializing, Loss Aversion, Fantasy, Competition, Arousal, Autonomy-Exploration, Mastery, Teamwork and Aesthetics [12].

In the second study [10], Quantic Foundry developed a model known as the Board Game Motivation Profile (BGMP) [10] based on their previous model targeted at video games (GMP). It has 4 high-level motivations, each composed of a central component, the dominant motivation, and one or more secondary components, often (but not always) aligned with the dominant motivation:

  • measures the competitiveness of the player and their pleasure (or not) in hostile actions against other players; social manipulation (secondary component) assesses if the player enjoys (or not) playing mind games where outcomes are not determined by dice or rule books;
  • measures if the player appreciates (or not) strategy games where a lot of thinking, planning and decision making is required; discovery (secondary component) is where the will to explore and discover is assessed, it can be from discovering new game mechanics, new rule sets or keeping up with new game releases and current meta; need to win (secondary component) measures if the player strongly cares (or not) about winning and beating their opponent;
  • measures if the players enjoy (or not) taking on a role in a believable alternate world with its own lore, culture and cast of interesting characters; aesthetics (secondary component) assesses if the player cares about the quality and design of the components and the board itself;
  • measures if the player plays the game mostly for the social interaction and to have a good time with other people; cooperation (secondary component) assesses if the player likes (or not) to work together with others towards a common goal; chance (secondary component) determines if the player enjoys (or not) luck elements in their tabletop games (ex.: dice, card drawing); accessibility (secondary component) evaluates if the player prefers games that a broad range of people can easily pick up and enjoy.

2.3 Importance of the Context of Play

One of the challenges that we wanted to address in this work was to take into account the human context of play, outside the gameplay events resulting from interacting with the artifact itself. We analysed a set of studies [8, 19, 20, 32, 35] that made us recognise new perspectives of possible events around the game which are completely external to it, but that can influence the player's moves, posture, and overall motivation to play tabletop games. We created a set of new questions with the collaboration of tabletop game experts that allowed us to answer different issues that arose within this theme, in order to confirm whether our participants agree with the importance of these traits. The value of materiality reflected in the physical objects of a tabletop game [19, 32] generated a new dimension (Object) to include in our questionnaire. This area of study allowed us to introduce a new perspective to be included in the characterization of our population of tabletop game players and their motivations to play.

3 METHODOLOGY

To define the dimensions for our motivation questionnaire, we started with the following three models from the literature: the GMP, the BGMP and the TGMI, from which all dimensions and items were considered, removing overlaps that arose and performing some adjustments, with the goal of including all different dimensions considered in the literature.

As a parallel process, we gathered feedback from experts and added new items not addressed by the existing models. The experts focused on the type of experiences they wished to deliver to players (Eurogamers, Wargamers, American style gamers) and the importance of the mood of the player and the human (friends, public gatherings, etc.) and the environment where the game should be played (controlled environment, add-ons, etc).

We proceeded to validate these dimensions, through a series of pilot studies aimed at measuring the internal consistency of the items defining these dimensions, and establishing our final set of items clustered by dimensions.

Finally, we collected the data from the hobbyist population sample and grouped the aligned dimensions into components, by using a measure of dimensional reduction (principal component analysis) which reduced our set of dimensions into the principal components of our final motivation model for tabletop player motivation.

4 QUESTIONNAIRE

The questionnaire is composed by four sections: (1) a demographic section establishing the overall gaming profile of the participant in the tabletop games hobby space; (2) a section capturing the participant's personality using the Five Factor Model [16], which is outside of the scope of this paper; (3) a section on the human context of play, which is focused more on how the participant decides to play the game and less tied to the decision of the designer of the game, and; (4) a final section about the preferences regarding the artifact itself, which are tightly related to the design decisions and the game artifact itself.

4.1 Demographic Section

The questionnaire begins with a small set of questions aiming at tracing a demographic profile of our participants through their gender, age, level of education, marital status and professional occupation.

4.2 Motivations associated with the Human Context of Play (Player Decisions)

This section includes all questions related to the participants’ profile and playing habits, and also questions related to the environment and context in which they play. Everything that happens or exists around the players is part of the whole Human context and environment. In this broad sense of the environment of play, players are what defines the human environment, enriching the experience of other players at the table and sometimes as spectators. The game as a system is only complete when the players play their roles [4, 15]. The physical environment dimension also includes particular aspects not related to the game itself or how to play it like decoration, noises, the comfort of the space, among others. Our goal in focusing on this issue is to be able to investigate what this connection is, what importance players give to aspects outside the game, and how these can interfere and influence game experience.

We organized the 39 items associated with the human context of play into 7 topics:

  • How frequently and how long you play: captures the playing pattern of the participants, and the parameters of an ideal tabletop play session.
  • With whom you play and why: captures information about the playing circles of the participants and their motivation to play.
  • Where you play: characterizes the space where play takes place and the amount of resources dedicated to it.
  • Tabletop game collection: establishes how much the participants research, value, acquire and care for the different tabletop games in their collection.
  • What impacts play: collects aspects existing outside of the game itself that are acknowledged by the participants to have an impact on the play experience.
  • Experience customization: inquires about the most important moments of play and how much a typical session can deviate from the vanilla designed experience.
  • Physical vs digital interaction: captures the participant opinion regarding digital, face-to-face play and hybrid settings.

As a first approach, in this paper, we mostly focus on the dimensions associated with the game artifact itself, i.e. the aspects more related to the designer decisions. We will explore how the human context correlates with the dimensions associated with the artifact in future work, as we strongly believe they are important to understand what motivates hobbyists to play tabletop games.

4.3 Motivations associated with the Artifact (Designer Decisions)

This section of the questionnaire captured the motivations for playing tabletop games associated with the game artifact itself. It includes a list of items associated with 12 different dimensions that ask the participants to state their agreement with a set of 35 statements. They are organized on multiple dimensions of the play experience, using a 7-point Likert scale and were inspired by three models previously presented: the GMP, the BGMP and the TGMI.

We worked with tabletop game experts to improve the original items. We went through an iterative process of reformulating the initial items based on rewriting, creating or deleting the ones which are causing some inconsistencies in each dimension, according to a measure of internal consistency (Cronbach's Alpha [28]). Additionally, new items were created in response to the experts’ identification of dimensions that they thought were relevant and that had not been included in the previous work that served as the basis for the elaboration of the motivation questionnaire.

The results of this iterative work are the following 12 dimensions:

  • a high score in ‘conflict’ identifies players who enjoy games where players can take hostile actions directly against each other;
  • a high score in ‘social manipulation’ identifies players who enjoy mind games, where outcomes are determined by their ability to bluff, deceive, and persuade other players;
  • a high score in ‘social’ identifies players who enjoy social interaction with other players;
  • a high score in ‘competition’ identifies players who enjoy building strategies that directly oppose other players in the game and pursue goals that are directly conflicting with the others’ goals;
  • a high score in ‘challenge’ identifies players who like to overcome obstacles while playing the game, as they learn and need to think;
  • a high score in ‘strategy’ identifies players who enjoy games where strategic mastery and skill are the primary determinants of the game's outcome, in opposition to chance and random elements;
  • a high score in ‘power’ identifies players who are motivated by accumulating or building resources over time;
  • a high score in ‘fantasy’ identifies players who enjoy fantasy-themed games or real-themed games to experience realities different from their own;
  • a high score in ‘story’ identifies players who value game elements that help building up a story during play, and this story motivates them to play;
  • a high score in ‘design’ identifies players who value all the aesthetic part of what is included in the game;
  • a high score in ‘object’ identifies players who find some special feature or affection in physical elements of the game;
  • a high score in ‘discovery’ identifies players who like to explore and have a broad interest in rule sets and game mechanics.

The full questionnaire is provided in Annex A.1 and Table 1 presents the values for the Cronbach's Alpha for the items of each dimension obtained from the final survey (N = 229).

Table 1: Cronbach's alpha obtained from the final survey.
Dimension Cronbach's Alpha
Conflict .871
Social Manipulation .814
Social .706
Competition .762
Challenge .760
Strategy .799
Power .699
Fantasy .861
Story .889
Design .896
Object .896
Discovery .741

5 STUDY

5.1 Sample

For this study, we contacted the main facilitators of Portuguese tabletop gaming communities and associations (on Facebook, WhatsApp, Discord, boardgamegeek.com) as well as boardgame cafés, local groups, and associations dealing with board games, asking them to disseminate the questionnaire.

In total, we received 245 responses, from which 229 were complete and considered in our analysis. Overall, participation offers a good coverage of our demographic space when considering the size of the population.

Figure 1
Figure 1: Demographic characterization of participants.

Table 2: Descriptive statistics of the results for the 12 dimensions.
Dimension Mean StdDev Min Q1 Median Q3 Max
Conflict 4.59 1.381 1.00 3.67 5.00 5.67 7.00
Social Manipulation 4.31 1.420 1.00 3.33 3.22 5.33 7.00
Social 5.45 1.048 2.00 5.00 5.67 6.33 7.00
Competition 4.19 1.259 1.00 3.25 4.25 5.00 7.00
Challenge 5.59 0.994 1.00 5.00 5.67 6.33 7.00
Strategy 5.82 0.967 1.00 5.00 6.00 6.50 7.00
Power 5.24 1.019 1.00 4.67 5.33 6.00 7.00
Fantasy 4.57 1.481 1.00 3.67 4.67 5.67 7.00
Story 4.98 1.382 1.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 7.00
Design 5.52 1.279 2.00 5.00 5.67 6.50 7.00
Object 5.42 1.263 1.00 4.50 5.60 6.00 7.00
Discovery 5.60 1.115 1.00 5.00 6.00 6.33 7.00

Participants are aged between 18 and 59 (Figure 1(a)) (M = 36, SD = 8.049), 78% identify as male, 21% as female (Figure 1(b)), 45% are single and 42% married (Figure 1(c)). The sex distribution deviates from the national population distribution. In 20213, the population comprised 47.6% males and 52.4% females and 41% of the population is married, while 43% is single. Most participants (78%) reported having a higher education (Figure 1(d)), when only 19.8% of the population is in this bracket. Although frequent occupations are in the areas of Consulting, Marketing and Information Technology, responses covered a wide variety of fields.

Finally participants own, on average, 99 tabletop games (81% owned 100+ games) and 16% buys multiple versions of a same game.

5.2 Results

Table 2 shows some descriptive statistics from the survey. Although most of the dimensions obtained an average rating of around 5, the whole spectrum of answers was used by participants, in practically all dimensions (with the minimum identified almost always being 1 and the maximum always 7). Overall, participants tended to report the importance of the game systems as most important to them than competition and manipulation.

Regarding gender, we found statistically significant differences in Conflict (t(226) = 3.295, p = .001), Social Manipulation (t(226) = 2.803, p = .006), Social (t(226) = −3.013, p = .003) and Discovery (t(226) = 2.697, p = .008). Male obtained higher scores in Conflict, Social Manipulation and Discovery. Female obtained higher scores in the Social dimension.

Regarding education, Conflict (t(226) = 2.063, p = .040) and Social Manipulation (t(226) = 2.362, p = .019) are the dimensions that differed more between tabletop game players with secondary and higher education. Secondary education participants obtained higher scores in these two dimensions.

Marital status does not present any statistically significant differences to point out.

We found multiple significant correlations between our 12 dimensions. Social is the dimension less correlated with the others, while Challenge, Strategy, Power, Fantasy, Story, Design, Object and Discovery exhibit a strong (r > 0.7) significant (p < 0.01) correlation values with at least one of the other dimensions. These results support our analysis of the results into principal components.

6 PLAYER MOTIVATION MODEL

This section presents the outcome of applying Principal Component Analysis to the previous 12 dimensions to produce a motivation model for tabletop game players. A 5-component model, that explains 80% of the variance is first presented, followed by a 3-component model, which can act as a bridge to existing models.

6.1 Player Motivation Model (5 components)

Taking into account that 5 components will explain 80% of the variance of the data with little cross loading between components, this number was chosen as the number of components for our model. Table 3 shows the rotated component matrix, where items with a loading less than 0.4 were removed [23]. The resulting model, in which two of the dimensions cross loaded on two components, was designated CSSII:

Table 3: Rotated Component Matrix for 5 components with loading above 0.4.
Dimension
Intellectual
Challenge
Imaginative
Experience
Sensory
Experience
Competitive
Interaction
Social
Challenge
Challenge .885
Strategy .819
Discovery .738
Fantasy .869
Story .818
Social .653 .413
Design .875
Object .860
Competition .794
Power .708
Social Manipulation .895
Conflict .575 .618
  • (Competition + Power + Conflict) The ‘competitive interaction’ component reveals interest for hostile confrontations and the need to win. These are players who love to compete against others and strive for victory. ‘Power’ is a dimension easily related with the other two as it is all about gathering resources while impeding others to do so, becoming more powerful, and winning the game.
  • (Social + Social Manipulation + Conflict) The ‘social challenge’ component is related to the social dimension of the experience, representing players that, more than being good, individually, at manipulating the details of the game systems, know how to interact with other players to ensure a successful game experience and an eventual victory. ‘Social manipulation’ and ‘conflict’ are two dimensions that relate to each other seamlessly, as players who enjoy conflicts typically need to use some social manipulation during play.
  • (Design + Object) The ‘sensory experience’ component represents players who like the games due to its aesthetics, the design of the board itself, its texture, color, size and shape of the game components.
  • (Challenge + Strategy + Discovery) The component of ‘intellectual challenge’ embraces the interest in game mechanisms and progression, how their exploitation can lead to victory, in a way that depends more on individual skill and strategy than on the interaction with others. This category identifies players who prefer to think before acting, planning their strategies and exercising their mind while playing.
  • (Fantasy + Story + Social) The component imaginative experience is related to the fictional experience of the game, such as its setting and characters. All the dimensions of ‘story’, ‘fantasy’ and ‘social’ are linked by common characteristics.

6.2 Comparing CSSII and BGMP

When comparing the CSSII model to the BGMP [10], here are our main findings:

  • In CSSII, although ‘social challenge’ presents some overlap with ‘conflict’ from BGMP, ‘social manipulation’ and ‘conflict’ are different dimensions and not embodied in one same component as it is the case in BGMP.
  • In CSSII, ‘conflict’ is not part of ‘intellectual challenge’, although it is part of the closest component in BGMP, ‘strategy’; the importance of winning to opponents may not be correlated with mastering the game mechanisms.
  • In CSSII, ‘discovery’ is not tied to the ‘need to win’; although ‘conflict’ appears in ‘competitive interaction’ and ‘social challenge’, it is not associated with ‘intellectual challenge’, where ‘discovery’ is included, reinforcing the previous point.
  • In CSSII, ‘competition’ is only included in one component, related with ‘power’ and ‘conflict’; this relation is absent from BGMP; ‘power’ and ‘competition’ dimensions correspond to ‘need to win’ dimension in BGMP, which belongs to the ‘strategy’ component, distinct from ‘conflict’. As such, there is no analogous dimension for ‘competitive interaction’ in BGMP.
  • In CSSII, the dimensions related to BGMP's ‘immersion’ are independent of the ‘social’ dimension, and split into two different components: ‘sensory experience’ and ‘imaginative experience’; one may value the components for their functional design value independently of their fictional counterpart.
  • In CSSII, ‘imaginative experience’ includes the dimensions of ‘fantasy’, ‘story’ and ‘social’, which could be viewed as a mix of ‘immersion’ and ‘social fun’ from the BGMP.
  • In CSSII, the ‘social dimension’ is somehow similar to ‘social fun’ from BGMP; in CSSII dimensions such as ‘chance’ and ‘accessibility’ were defined within the ‘strategy’ items (see Annex A.1).

Overall, although there is some overlap between the findings from the two studies, the differences encountered encourage further research on the subject.

6.3 Player Motivation Model (3 components)

We now present a more compact model with 3 components accounting for 64% of the variance while still having little cross loading between components. Table 4 depicts the rotated component matrix. This model, designated SIM, has the following components:

  • (Social Manipulation + Conflict + Competition) The ‘social challenge’ component combines aspects from two of the components from the CSSII model, ‘competitive interaction’ and ‘social challenge’. These are players who enjoy competing against other players when playing tabletop games.
  • (Story + Fantasy + Design + Social + Object) The ‘imaginative experience’ merges the components ‘sensory experience’ and ‘imaginative experience’ from the 5-component model. These are players who enjoy the experience provided by the manipulation of both physical and fictional components of the game.
  • (Strategy + Challenge + Discovery + Power + Object + Competition) Mechanism exploration complements CSSII's Intellectual Challenge with some dimensions from other components. These are players who enjoy discovering, mastering and displaying their mastery over the game mechanisms. The ‘object’ dimension suggests the manipulation of game pieces could contribute to the feeling of control and strategy. The size or shape of these pieces is something that these players value due to its functional design, which impacts the ease of mechanism exploration.
Table 4: Rotated Component Matrix for 3 components with loading above 0.4.
Dimension
Mechanism
Exploration
Imaginative
Experience
Social
Challenge
Strategy .840
Challenge .815
Discovery .726
Power .668
Story .802
Fantasy .769
Design .741
Social .656
Object .488 .647
Social Manipulation .776
Conflict .765
Competition .436 .541

Although the 3-component model is unable to capture important subtleties of the 5-component model, it is aligned with other interaction model such as the Engagement Design model [37], which identifies 3 streams aimed at adjusting and choosing games (in general, not only tabletop games) to engage users. While not identical, the streams present some connections to the 3 components of our model:

  1. The “abstracts” like to simplify and generalize everything, they feel comfortable by dealing with doubts and do problem-solving by themselves; this dimension is somewhat related with ‘mechanism exploration’, although it does not consider interaction.
  2. The “thinkers” like new experiences and are led by imagination, curiosity, and creativity; this stream is related to imaginative experience.
  3. The “dramatics” are human people, they show understanding with other players worries, empathy and trust; to a certain degree, motivated by social challenges, but without the emphasis on confrontation.

Regarding this last component, CSSII highlights a more confrontational side to social interaction in the context of tabletop games, which distinguishes our approach from Zagalo's model [37].

6.4 Limitations

At a conceptual level related to tabletop games, there is not yet in place a universal vocabulary that can be applied to every study. This may make it difficult for different players to interpret the spelling and meaning of questions and item scales from the questionnaires, and consequently, make it difficult for us to actually compare answers. Concepts such as narratives, dynamics or game mechanics may have different meanings or origins for different players, and so, when asked about it, their answers may turn out to be the same by coincidence and not because they have the same vision of them. We often face some subjectivity in the analysis of results due to the fact that different questions may relate to one or more specific dimensions, which is not something linear to evaluate.

Another factor that limited our study was the fact that not all hobby tabletop game players attend the online communities or organized groups that we were able to reach in the context of this experiment, so it was not possible for them to answer our questionnaires, which due to the pandemic would be impossible to answer in person. Although we reached out to pen-and-paper roleplaying games communities, the questions ended up being more targeted towards ’classical’ tabletop games. However, it is difficult to set a boundary between the more classical tabletop games and those with strong storytelling elements, such as ’Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon’4. We need to collect much more data to be able to ensure a diversity of viewpoints from all corners of the community [4].

We realized that the environment of play influences the experience: where, but mostly with whom players play, may impact the enjoyment of tabletop play experiences. Some types of player profiles may enjoy playing with some players more than others. Besides the player profiles, the mood can also be highly influential. All these personal and social dimensions should be explored in future research.

7 CONCLUSIONS

Tabletop games have been increasingly trending in recent years. As such, it is relevant to understand what motivates people to engage in this activity when considering designing experiences for tabletop game players and what can be applicable to other game platforms both hybrid and digital. While multiple models have been proposed to explain what motivates engaging with digital games, the domain of tabletop games is still lacking this kind of attention.

With the goal of researching what motivates hobbyists to play tabletop games, we designed a questionnaire that would gather data on individual and collective dimensions of the experience. One of the novelties of the approach is the inclusion of a section aimed at capturing the environmental context of a typical play session, in an attempt to understand how it interferes with gameplay and complement the dimensions of the experience related to the design of the artifact itself.

From the literature and after consulting with experts, we identified 12 dimensions potentially acting as motivations to play tabletop games. We iteratively created and validated a questionnaire of 35 items that would capture these dimensions of the experience. We invited hobbyists (N = 229) with an average collection of 99 tabletop games each, to participate in the survey.

Based on the correlations identified between the 12 dimensions in the results, and using Principal Component Analysis, we reached a 5-component model outlining the main dimensions of motivation to play tabletop games: Competitive Interaction; Social Challenge, Sensory Experience, Intellectual Challenge and Imaginative Experience. Although some dimensions are aligned with previous works such as the Board Game Motivation Profile, we identified new potential interpretations of how these dimensions interact. We also explored a 3-component model and verified how it was aligned with more general interaction models such as the Engagement Design Model.

The 5 component model helps to clarify some of the differences between digital and physical platforms. Arguably, the social dimensions of face-to-face interactions and all sensorial experiences might be replicated with adequate technology, if not now, at least someday. However, hobbyist board gamers are preferring these analog gaming experiences over the available technology that emulates them. If Competitive Interaction and Intellectual Challenge are either present in all game platforms, in analogue games, the Imaginative Experience embraces the physicality of play. Going beyond the physicality provided, in digital games, by the controllers and the space we play in, in analogue games, the environment takes an importance of its own as it merges seamlessly with the interactive space of play.

We expect this model to inform the design of tabletop games. Consider, as an example, the asymmetric tabletop game Root5. In Root, each player controls a faction with a distinct playstyle. Some reward individual player skills while others require player interaction to succeed, some are aggressive while others are more passive, etc. A model such as the one proposed in this paper could help build interesting mechanics aligned with different player motivations.

As future work, we aim at reusing the approach in other demographic contexts related with tabletop game motivations and research whether the obtained results are consistent across contexts. We will also explore the existence of correlations between the CSSII model and Personality across demographic niches, different preferences and playing habits. With regard to the method for collecting responses, we will aim at supplementing the current approach with qualitative methods such as interviews. This way we would have more complete, real and personalised answers, without the inherent limitations associated with online surveys.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was supported by national funds through Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) with reference UIDB/50021/2020 and PD/BD/146491/2019. The authors thank Miguel Antunes for his contribution to this work.

A QUESTIONNAIRE

A.1 Motivations Associated with the Artifact (Designer Decisions)

The participants were asked to express their agreement with each one of the following statement, using a 7-point Likert scale, from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Items were shuffled before being presented to the participants as one uniform list.

A.1.1 Conflict items.

  • I like games that allow players to interfere with other players’ resources or assets.
  • I like games that put units in conflict.
  • I like games with conflict mechanisms that allow players to block others’ plays.

A.1.2 Social Manipulation items.

  • I like games that involve convincing other players of something.
  • I like games that involve bluffing, deception or persuasion.
  • I like games that involve negotiating or bargaining with other players.

A.1.3 Social items.

  • I like games that promote fun interactions between players.
  • I like tabletop games that help me get to know and talk to other players.
  • I like tabletop games that allow me to help or co-operate with other players.

A.1.4 Competition items.

  • I like beating my opponents.
  • I like to be recognized as a top-level player.
  • I like to play to win.
  • I like to dominate other players.

A.1.5 Challenge items.

  • I like games that make me think.
  • I like games with difficult challenges to overcome.
  • I like to spend time learning and/or mastering new game mechanics.

A.1.6 Strategy items.

  • I like games that allow me to think and execute a long-term strategy.
  • I like tabletop games that require planning or complex decisions.
  • I like tabletop games where luck and randomness have a limited impact on outcomes.
  • I like games that involve strategic thinking.

A.1.7 Power items.

  • I like tabletop games where I can upgrade my units or structures and become more powerful.
  • I like tabletop games that allow me to manage resources and build units.
  • I like to accumulate large amounts of resources during the game.

A.1.8 Fantasy items.

  • I like tabletop games that allow me to pretend to be someone different or to be somewhere else when I play.
  • I like being able to do something in the game that I wouldn't be able to do in real life.
  • I like the excitement of taking on an alternate personality in a game.

A.1.9 Story items.

  • I think narratives in tabletop games are important.
  • I like tabletop games that place importance on plot.
  • I like tabletop games that care about having elaborate stories and characters.

A.1.10 Design items.

  • I like to play board games with appealing pieces and components.
  • I attach importance to the aesthetics of the board game.
  • I like board games that are eye-catching due to their graphic and object design.

A.1.11 Object items.

  • The manipulation of physical objects/materials in as tabletop game is important because it creates more interaction between the players and the game, not just because they are needed to play.
  • The texture, material, weight, sound or another detail of a tabletop game piece is important.

A.1.12 Discovery items.

  • I like to explore and experiment with new ways of playing tabletop games.
  • I like to try new tabletop games and keep up to date with new releases.
  • I like to stay informed about new trends in the hobby.

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FOOTNOTE

1 www.boardgamegeek.com

2In this paper, the terms ’tabletop game’ and ’boardgame’ are used interchangeably. For an in-depth discussion, please refer to [18]

3Instituto National de Estatísticas (https://censos.ine.pt/)

4Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is a thematic story-based solo or cooperative boardgame in a dark Arthurian realm, designed by Krzysztof Piskorski and Marcin Świerkot and published by Awaken Realms in 2019.

5Root is a strategy wargame designed by Cole Wehrle and published by Leder Games in 2018, in which the players play as woodland factions fighting for contrasting goals to decide the fate of the forest.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3582437.3582477