Explorations in player motivations: Game mods

This article aims to analyze player motivations derived from the needs framework of Murray (1938) in relation to user modifications (mods) to an existing commercial computer game. Although the restrictions imposed by the game mechanics significantly reduce the number of player needs satisfied by a game and trap the player within the common motivational cycle of Achievement, Aggression, Harmavoidance and Acquisition (Bostan and Kaplancali, 2009), this study shows that the game mods created by users attempt to compensate for this by satisfying the needs of Sentience, Exhibition, Recognition, Sex, Play and Affiliation. While attempting to find the current trends in user created content for role-playing games (RPGs), this article also discusses the implications of game modding in identifying the missing features of an entertainment experience and of investigating the player motivations. This discussion is framed in terms of the user-environment relations of a recently released popular computer role-playing game (RPG). The gaming experience provided by this genre is analogous to real life and thus has the potential to satisfy a broader range of player needs. The hypothesized mod-need relations are also reviewed with a case study.