Through the Azerothian looking glass: mapping in-game preferences to real world demographics

Examining how in-game behavior preferences map onto real world demographics provides important empirically-derived insights into how to match game-based mechanisms to target demographic segments. Using behavioral and demographic data from 1,037 World of Warcraft players, we used multiple regressions to provide this mapping. Given current interest in gamifying applications, we believe these findings are relevant for both gaming and non-gaming research.

Citation

Yee, N.; Ducheneaut, N.; Shiao, H.; Nelson, L. Through the Azerothian looking glass: mapping in-game preferences to real world demographics. Proceedings of the 2012 ACM International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2012); 2012 May 5-10; Austin TX. NY: ACM; 2012; 2811-2814.