A Meta-Ethnography of Player Motivation in Digital Games: The 28 Dimensions of Play

Abstract

Video games have become a significant component of popular culture, with the reasons why players pursue particular gaming experiences being a heavily explored topic within games research. Player motivations toward games have seen classification in many motivation models, resulting in diverse outcomes covering a variety of scopes within games media. We performed a meta-ethnography to explore the findings of this diverse topic and provide a comprehensive overview of the existing body of knowledge, resulting in our synthesized 28 Dimensions of Play. Through the definition of these Dimensions, we are able to observe the gaps present in explored sources and propose a more complete model of player motivations.