Casual and Hardcore Player Traits and Gratifications of Pokémon GO, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, Ingress
This addresses a gap in understanding player demographics and motivations for location-based games, but it is incremental as it applies existing models to new data.
The study tackled the lack of comprehensive research on location-based game players by surveying 2390 active players, finding associations between satisfaction and social aspects, impacts of game mechanics on gratifications and traits, and a strong distinction between hardcore and casual players.
Location-based games (LBG) impose virtual spaces on top of physical locations. Studies have explored LBG from various perspectives. However, a comprehensive study of who these players are, their traits, their gratifications, and the links between them is conspicuously absent from the literature. In this paper, we aim to address this lacuna through a series of surveys with 2390 active LBG players utilizing Tondello's Player Traits Model and Scale of Game playing Preferences, and Hamari's scale of LBG gratifications. Our findings (1) illustrate an association between player satisfaction and social aspects of the studied games, (2) explicate how the core-loops of the studied games impact the expressed gratifications and the affine traits of players, and (3) indicate a strong distinction between hardcore and casual players based on both traits and gratifications. Overall our findings shed light into the players of LBG, their traits, and gratifications they derive from playing LBGs.