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Source - Quantic Foundry
For this analysis, we used the data from 1.57 million gamers who participated in the Gamer Motivation Profile between June 2015 and April 2024. Respondents from China were excluded because gamers in China have a very different gaming motivation profile (likely due to the historically more isolated development of their gaming industry).
What is Strategy in our Gaming Motivation Model?
In our motivation model, Strategy is defined as the appeal of long-term thinking, planning, and careful decision-making. Gamers who score high on Strategy prefer longer time horizons for planning and complex decision-making with many underlying parameters to consider (i.e., all the branching decisions and likely outcomes) seen in games like Europa Universalis and Total War. Gamers who score low on Strategy prefer more reactive/spontaneous gameplay and simple decision-making with few underlying parameters to consider, such as in games like Just Dance and Animal Crossing. A good metaphor for Strategy is the size of the whiteboard in your mind that each decision is taking to map out, think through, and optimize.Of the 12 Motivations, Strategy has Changed The Most
When we looked for long-term trends across the 12 motivations, we found that many motivations were stable or experienced minor deviations over the past 9 years. Strategy was the clear exception; it had substantially declined over the past 9 years and the magnitude of this change was more than twice the size of the next largest change.In the chart below, the dots represent the average Strategy score among the gamers who responded to the Gamer Motivation Profile each month between June 2015 and April 2024 (using a rolling 3-month window). Strategy is represented on the y-axis as a percentile, with the starting date (June 2015) anchored at 50th-%tile—i.e., the initial collected data is used to define the starting norm.
Using the starting norm (i.e., the 50th-%tile) as the basis for comparison, the average Strategy score has declined to 33rd-%tile as of April 2024. Or put more plainly, 67% of gamers today care less about strategic thinking and planning when playing games than the average gamer back in June 2015.
How Big Exactly is a Drop to 33rd-%tile?
Both percentiles and psychometrics are fairly abstract concepts and the magnitude of a drop to 33rd-%tile can be difficult to grok. To help anchor this finding, here are some real-world magnitude equivalents using more familiar metrics:- It’s the equivalent of all men age 20+ in the US losing 17 pounds in weight.
- It’s the equivalent of all adult men (worldwide) losing 1.34 inches in height.
- It’s the equivalent of everyone (worldwide) losing 6.75 points of IQ.
Gradual, Persistent Decline That Pre-Dates COVID
When we initially had an inkling that Strategy had declined, we suspected that it was potentially due to COVID (and avoiding anxiety related to thinking about the future), but when we conducted the longitudinal analysis, several things stood out:- The decline in Strategy clearly pre-dates COVID; it is noticeable from the earliest data collection periods and the trend line suggests it started before June 2015.
- The trend line also makes clear that what we’re observing is a gradual but very persistent long-term downward trend in Strategy. Whatever the cause, it’s likely not a sudden single historical event, but part of a larger, long-term cultural/psychological shift.
- The downward trend slowed down prior to COVID (right before January 2020), regained traction during the COVID era, and then has slowed down since COVID restrictions have been lifted. So there is a potential argument to be made that COVID exacerbated or prolonged an ongoing trend.
The Decline is Identical for Both Men and Women
We’ll look at potential confounds and data sampling issues in several ways. First, let’s break down the chart by gender. Note that in the chart below, we’ve anchored the starting point of both cohorts to 50th-%tile so we can more directly compare differences in change over time—i.e., men actually care more about Strategy than women so there “should” be a gap between the lines, but this would make it harder to visually see any differences in the longitudinal trend lines.The decline in Strategy is remarkably consistent across male and female gamers. This also means that the overall finding would be the same even if the proportion of men and women had changed over time (which it largely did not; see below).
The Decline is Similar Whether We’re Looking At US or Non-US Gamers
The decline in Strategy is also very similar whether we’re looking at US alone or non-US countries. As with the gender chart above, the starting point for both cohorts is anchored at 50th-%tile to allow for better visual comparison of differences in the longitudinal trend.
But Why has Strategy Declined Over Time?
There are many seemingly-related findings in terms of our media consumption habits. For example, over time, shorter YouTube videos have garnered a higher share of overall views. The duration of shots in movies (i.e., between each cut) has decreased from 16 seconds in 1930 to 4 seconds in 2010. The average time spent on a computer app window (e.g., on a Word doc before switching to a browser window) has decreased from 2.5 minutes in 2004 to 47 seconds in 2016.In this light, the decline in Strategy is likely not an idiosyncratic phenomenon among digital gamers, but parallels the general reduction in attention spans observed by researchers in different fields.
But because all over-time comparisons are inherently correlational, it’s difficult to pin down cause and effect. While we often blame social media for our decreased attention spans, there’s a lack of concrete causal evidence for this. Of course, it bears pointing out that causal evidence for this would be difficult to produce since it’s unethical to raise children in artificial labs. Also, the shot duration analysis in movies is a counterpoint to blaming social media entirely: this downward trend in media attention span can be traced as far back as the 1930s, although it is certainly possible that social media accelerated the underlying trend.
Another potential hypothesis is that the increasing negativity, polarization, intrusiveness, and emotional manipulation in social media has created a persistent cognitive overload on the finite cognitive resources we have. Put simply, we may be too worn out by social media to think deeply about things. For example, higher engagement with social media is correlated with lower math and reading scores and poorer mental health among teenagers. Of course, again, these findings are correlational and not direct causal evidence.
Implications for Making Games and Understanding Gamers
Even if the underlying cause(s) cannot be identified, it’s clear that gamers have become less interested in strategic thinking over the past 9 years. It implies that gamers are now more easily cognitively overloaded when they play games and are more likely to avoid strategic complexity. This has implications for game design and marketing. Overall, gamers now prefer shorter time horizons to plan for (i.e., the number of steps and branching outcomes they have to think through) and less complex decisions that rely on fewer parameters to consider.And for those of us who study gamers, typically in the more confined context of specific game titles/franchises, this finding may help explain observed changes among Strategy-related player segments over the past decade that we would otherwise have more likely attributed to game feature changes or COVID.
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