(Commerce)—Once considered the refuge of anti-social techno-geeks, computer games are now among the hottest forms of entertainment.
It started with Pong in 1972, but it took Space Invaders and Pac-Man to establish a fan base. Even so, it did not seem credible that the average American would one day spend more money on computer games than they do on movies.
The virtual world has become increasingly real, with intense graphics enabling players to immerse themselves in the experience. Nor is it an isolated experience: the Internet enables people to play with, or against, other gamers.
On the first day of sales of Microsoft's Halo 2—a war game in which the Earth is threatened by alien attackers—more than 2.33 million copies were sold, according to Tracy Henley, psychology department head at Texas A&M University-Commerce. That's about one copy for every 100 people in America, with an estimated income of $125 million, he says.
As part of her honors thesis, A&M-Commerce graduate Anna Park studied
the connection between personality and the character choices people make in
fantasy roleplaying computer games.
So it's not surprising that A&M-Commerce psychology student Anna Park decided to plug directly into popular culture and chart the unknown territory of how personality impacts alter egos in fantasy games, currently the most popular of roleplay games in which people choose their own character.
Park was intrigued by the relationship between personality, and the things people actually do to in their everyday life. She wondered if very different types of people would choose very different types of roles as a function of their personality.
With the help of Henley, her thesis adviser, Park devised a lengthy survey that simulated the process of creating a character for a fantasy computer game.
About 250 A&M-Commerce undergraduate and graduate students volunteered to complete the survey. The thesis incorporated widely used personality inventories and looked at the relationships between the participants' personalities and their choice of fantasy character.
"I was surprised that people weren't choosing something different from what they were in the real world," says Park. "I thought compliant people might choose an evil character as a way to release aggression, but they didn't. It seems that people want some form of themselves in the fantasy so that they can see themselves perform in that environment."
Park, who plays computer fantasy games herself, admits that she too tends to choose a character "a lot like me" but which is more of an ideal, with the ability to do super-hero stuff, like use magic.
Park considers fantasy games to be hot right now because "a lot of people saw the movie 'Lord of the Rings,' and it has helped to popularize fantasy and make it less cheesy."
Park was also surprised at how many people wanted to play good characters. Women preferred characters who are helpful or nurturing, while men were somewhat more inclined to choose dark roles.
The most popular species across the board were elves, which are characterized as being highly intelligent. Men tended to also favor humans, who are characterized as having average skills but being very practical all-rounders. Extroverts tended not to like humans, probably because they wanted something more unusual and adventurous, and they chose characters with charisma.
Agreeable people chose halflings, who are described in the study as fun loving and very sociable. They recoiled from socially deviant roles such as assassins and thieves.
While ethnicity generally did not seem to have a strong impact on choice, Park did notice that the two roles featuring a religious occupation ranked highly among Hispanics. In general, appearance was important. Not many people of any ethnicity picked the least attractive characters.
There was also some evidence that people who were more experienced at computer games chose more savvy characters than the less experienced. It may be that those people have already formed a game persona that is efficient and which they are comfortable with.
"This study was another confirmation that we cannot escape our personality, even in places where you would think we would try to escape it," says Park.
Park is a Sulphur Springs High School graduate.