The popularity of online games highlights the need for research approaches that can increase our scientific understanding of online game play experience. This paper proposes a model for examining and evaluating the ways by which factors of game motivate players and shape psychological processes. Previously, Nick Yee has done one of the most extensive and influential empirical research on motivations for play in online games. His research provides the foundation to understand what motivates people to play games and how we can improve our designs based on those findings. His factor analysis revealed ten motivational sub-components that grouped into three overarching components of achievement, social, and immersion. However, there are a handful of empirical results that were unique and did not clearly fit into Yee's motivational components, such as "making a difference", "the search for self", "the search for youth", and "the nurturance motivation", as Yee acknowledged in his paper. Therefore we developed a motivational theory of "reality integration" to encompass the cases that could not be explained by Yee's theory. While his theory was implicity focused on "escapism" (escape from reality), we found that dual and integrated perspectives of "reality integration" and "escapism" of online games are very important in understanding players' behavior and improving game design. The future goal of this research is to develop a motivational design framework for educational games or serious games.

ABSTRACT
  1. 서론
  2. 동기 이론
  3. 현실통합(RI) 이론
  4. 결론 및 향후 연구 방향
  참고문헌

• 최재원(Department of Media, Ajou University) | Jae-Won Choi
• 고욱(Department of Media, Ajou University) | Wook Koh Correspondence to