Tag: World of Warcraft



The adventures of the Alliance and the Hordes in the popular video game World of Warcraft might not seem like typical research material for marketing professors, but Olin’s Yulia Nevskaya, assistant professor of marketing found data based on World of Warcraft gamers’ behavior to be a goldmine of information to help identify what motivates the gamers and how to keep them engaged.

Nevskaya’s co-researcher is Paulo Albuquerque, PhD, associate professor of marketing at  INSEAD.

“We were thinking along the lines of extrinsic-intrinsic motivation,” Nevskaya said. “If an individual needs an external reward of some kind to perform an activity, we say she is extrinsically motivated. However, if she does what she does for the sake of that activity alone, she is intrinsically motivated.”

world-of-warcraft1The study looked at gaming sessions of almost 1,000 randomly selected anonymous gamers. The data available to researchers showed when gamers logged in to play a game, when they progressed to the next level in a game, and when they got a “tangible” reward, such as a new sword or a virtual pet. By analyzing the timing of earning rewards against the timing of logging in and out of a game, the authors were able to classify each gamer as being mostly extrinsically or intrinsically motivated.

Researchers found about 20 percent of the gamers were highly motivated by the pure pleasure of exploring and interacting in the fantasy environment of the game — they were intrinsically motivated. The remaining 80 percent were more responsive to in-game extrinsic rewards that they earned during play.

“As such, by strategically managing the size and timing of those extrinsic rewards, a game developer can effectively manage gamers’ motivation to play the game,” Nevskaya said.

As a result of the study, the authors developed a model that can help companies develop optimal rewards schedules to maximize consumer engagement with games and similar types of products.

Watch video. Prof. Nevskaya discusses her research findings on how consumers react to product updates when playing World of Warcraft. The results find a need to balance novelty, innovation, and familiarity to keep consumers engaged. You can read Prof. Nevskaya’s paper co-authored with Paulo Albuquerque here: “The Impact of Innovation and Social Interactions on Product Usage”.

 Based on news release by Erika Ebsworth-Goold, WashU Newsroom