Developing Gaming Instinctual Motivation Scale (GIMS): Item Development and Pre-testing

Abstract

The 6-11 Framework (Dillon R., On the way to fun: An emotion-based approach to successful game design, 2010) explains game playing experience using emotion and motivation. Specifically, game playing experience induces six emotions, including anger, fear, joy/happiness, pride, sadness, and excitement, and 11 core instinctual behavioral responses, including survival, self-identification, collecting, greed, protection/care/nurture, aggressiveness, revenge, competition, communication, exploration/curiosity, and color appreciation. The 6-11 Framework depicts game playing experience in a systematic way, useful for academicians and industry professionals. Nonetheless, it originated from simple empirical observations and lacked a proper means to measure the 11 motivations proposed in the model. Therefore, the first step to testing the model is to construct a questionnaire to quantify the 11 motivations. In this study, we constructed the Gaming Instinctual Motivation Scale and conducted a pilot test with a sample of 20 participants. The data showed that the scale had high internal consistency regardless of the game genres, indicating that the scale items were measuring the same construct even when applied in various game genres. The questionnaire could be used in future studies that intend to apply the components proposed in the 6-11 Framework and to test gaming motivations in general. Also, the questionnaire may be useful for industry professionals in predicting the possible motivations of game play.