Video Game Presence as a Function of Genre: A Preliminary Inquiry

Abstract

While presence, or the sense of being there, is widely understood to be important in game play, it has not been examined in terms of video game genre. In the present inquiry various forms of self reported presence during a recently played game were examined as a function of three general classes of genre. These included casual games (i.e., puzzle and Kart Racing), hard core games (i.e., 1st person shooter, action-adventure and role-playing) and real world games (i.e., music and sports). It was found that while the casual genre’s had the least presence overall they were no different in self reported absorption or game satisfaction than the other two genre types. Sociability was highest in the hard core game genre types as was the realism of 3D effects. Finally, the real world genre were most characterized by the perceived sense of similarity to the real world, thus the label.