Masking to Succeed: Exploring Identity Barriers to Competitive Drive in Online Gaming
| dc.contributor.advisor | Foxman, Maxwell | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Dudukovic, Nicole | |
| dc.contributor.author | Crew, Toby | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2024-12-12T22:35:55Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2024-12-12T22:35:55Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2024-10 | |
| dc.description | 35 pages | |
| dc.description.abstract | The toxic social environment of online competitive video games is well known, but despite negative experiences, gamers from all walks of life are continually motivated to improve and engage with others in the name of competition, including those often targeted by bigotry, such as women and transgender players. While research on how identity affects competitive drive exists within the esports space, there is no standard inclusion of other marginalized genders, few papers standardize identity and competitive drive variables, such as personality and competitive indexes, and papers covering individual motivations and experiences within online social environments have only been published within the last 4 years. I surveyed and interviewed 10 undergraduate gamers who played at least 5 hours of competitive ranked modes in video games a week. I used the HEXACO personality index specifically because of its reliability in describing personality, and the Competitive Index because of its multifaceted approach to defining competitive drive. After statistical analysis, and after coding each 25-45 minute long interview manually using the Competitive Index as a coding scheme, I found associations between gender identity and Enjoyment of Competition, both quantitatively and qualitatively. I also found a negative association between Desire to Win and Honesty-Humility, and a weaker positive association between Personal Development Competitiveness, and Emotionality. Additionally, I found that while perceptions of online social environment interactions were generally negative, many found solace and enjoyment in competing with strangers, and others found ways around negative interactions to not sacrifice their competitive drive, such as playing in closed communities. While the methodology was flawed, and no significant conclusions could be derived from the quantitative analysis, these findings imply a complex relationship between individual differences in competitive drive and self-identity, and future research into personality as a factor of competitiveness, controlled for social environment, should be looked into. | |
| dc.identifier.orcid | 0009-0000-1723-5971 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1794/30240 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | |
| dc.publisher | University of Oregon | en |
| dc.rights | Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0-US | |
| dc.subject | Psychology, Competitiveness, Personality, Esports, Video games | |
| dc.title | Masking to Succeed: Exploring Identity Barriers to Competitive Drive in Online Gaming | |
| dc.type | Thesis |