The Gamer's Distinction

The video gaming industry is a relatively youg industry. Yet, in a short time it has become one of the biggest media industries worldwide and it is still growing. A lot of research has been devoted to the effects of playing games, in particular the effects of violent games. Another popular topic is why gamers play to play specific games. In this thesis I aim to contribute to insight in game preferences by investigating who plays which games. The theoretical background for this idea comes from Bourdieu's Distinction theory. In his book La Distinction (1979) Bourdieu maps cultural preferences of people with different social status. As with film, music and books games can be divided into genres. In this thesis I will first discuss many game genres and then make a selection to use for my research. By means of a survey I have asked Dutch gamers about their gender, age and level of education and what genres they play (N = 247). Gamers were not asked about preferred genre directly, but about elements of gameplay. During the analysis of the results I have used factor analysis to recompose the gameplay elements into genres. The results of this thesis clearly show a connection between demographic characteristics gender, age and level of education and preferred genre. Gamers younger than 21, for example, appreciate the shooter genre more than older people. Women appreciate sport and puzzle games more than men, and men are more into shooter and strategy games.