An Exploratory Study of Player Performance, Motivation, and Enjoyment in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games

Enjoyment is a vital component in the business model of the game industry. Despite research on their relationship to the success or failure of a game, little attention has been paid to the effect of player performance on player enjoyment. This study investigates how player motivation, player performance, and player enjoyment are connected in Ever Quest II, a popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Sony Online Entertainment. It investigates the impact of task difficulty and player performance on player enjoyment. Estimation of task difficulty and player performance was performed by the analysis of the game's operational data such as game logs, while assessment of player enjoyment was based on a large-scale survey. Our findings indicate that the correlations do not fully conform to the flow theory and additionally suggest that the knowledge of player motivations is critical in accurately predicting player enjoyment.