--Fortnite.
OK.
Hello, everyone.
My name is Jie.
I'm a PhD student from the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
And this is my advisor and also the second author
of this paper.
Our topic is, "Who Purchases and Why?
Explaining Motivations for In-Game Purchasing
in the Online Survival Game Fortnite."
So before we talk about Fortnite,
let's talk about the free-to-play business
model and the in-game items.
So the business model of publishing a game for free
and then making revenues from selling
in-game items for revenue, known as free-to-play,
is really popular now.
So in many free-to-play games, in-game items
are often instrumental and can directly
benefit the player's gameplay-- for example,
to enhance a certain skill, or receive
extra time to play the game, or unlock some features.
But some games also provide purely cosmetic items
for purchasing, such as just changing the clothes
that the avatar wears.
So then Fortnite-- Fortnite is a multiplayer online survival
game, known as the battle royale game genre.
So once the game starts, up to 100 players
must compete with others to collect weapons, resources,
and items for survival and combine it with one another.
So one of the core mechanics is to collect resources
to build platforms and walls to either get a vantage point
or hide from the enemy.
So the last player or team will be the winner.
So Fortnite is also free to download on e-store.
Most of this revenue is from purchases
of this in-game currency called V-bucks.
So 1,000 V-bucks is equal to $10.
We decided to do this study because Fortnite is considered
one of the most successful games to generate revenues
from selling in-game items now.
And it should also be noted that, while in-game purchasing
is certainly not new, Fortnite is unique
because the items are purely cosmetic
and do not give the player any advantages.
So if you pay or not pay, basically you
can still play the game without any issue.
So we want to know, what are the differences between spenders
and non-spenders in Fortnite.
And among those who do spend money, why do some spend more
than others?
So in particular, we focus on survey research questions.
The first one, what factors are associated with the likelihood
of spending money in Fortnite?
And second, what are the reasons for players to buy
in-game items in Fortnite?
And third, how do those factors and reasons
influence the actual amount of money players
spend in the game?
So we go back to literature to identify the factors.
We just realized many papers talk
about the social and individual factors,
and some papers talk about habits.
But previous research has explored those factors
in different gaming contexts.
So Fortnite is representing a new game genre and context,
so we decided to explore that.
We applied like a survey study explore format
and tried to answer our research questions.
So to recruit participants, we used
multiple online and offline platforms,
including Mechanical Turk and also
Facebook groups and Reddit, Twitter
and also the eSports club from our university.
And we finally got about 215 responses for the analysis.
Because we were going to use a regression,
we tried to explain our dependent and independent
variables here.
So the independent variables are the reasons
to purchase in-game developing based on a pilot and interviews
with Fortnite players.
We also include habits and some other behavioral questions,
like playing frequency.
How often do you play?
How many times do you spend each week?
And also demographic, such as age and income.
So we have two dependent variables.
The likelihood of purchasing in-game,
which was measured by the question,
do you buy in-game items in Fortnite--
the answers are yes or no.
And also, we have another dependent variable, the amount
of V-bucks you purchased.
So the average age of our participants is around 29.
So we have more males than females.
Most of our participants are white.
The primary platform they played was PC.
And the interesting thing we found, most of the participants
played alone against strangers.
And some of them are--
they also play with friends.
So to answer our first research questions,
so spenders versus non-spenders, we
put those variables as dependent variable and ran regression.
We found that age is negatively related to the likelihood
of in-game purchasing, which means that younger people are
more likely to buy in-game items--
so in addition, where hours of play
was not a significant predictor, but the total length of play
is significant.
So this finding suggests that it is the attachment to the game,
rather than the time spent in the game, that affects
players' willingness to pay.
And we wanted to find out the motivations.
We then ran factor analysis.
We identified two motivations for players
to buy in-game items in Fortnite.
Social pressure measures players' perception
towards being influenced by friends or peers.
And individuality measures participants' desire
to be unique.
So you can take a look at the items.
And then, among the spenders, who spends more,
we also ran a regression model, including those two
motivations variables.
And we found that habit is negatively related
to actual participant behavior.
So we don't know why.
So a possible explanation is that players who spend more
in the game are compulsive shoppers and care more
about the cosmetic value rather than the instrumental
value of the virtual goods.
So individuality was positively where
social pressure was negatively related to the actual money
spending.
So in this sense, players who want to differentiate them
from their friends and other players
will spend more money in the game.
So our findings point out some aspects
that may have been overlooked in other studies,
especially regarding digital consumption
and self-expression.
So in our study, digital consumption, the spending
behavior, is motivated by being unique from others,
rather than wanting to belong to the community.
So in this sense, digital consumption
is not for aggregating or co-constructing the self,
but for establishing a more distinctive self.
So since contextualization is an important factor
of studying the virtual economy, we thus
believe that our work also points out
the importance of taking the specific online context,
like a survival genre, a survival
game, and social dynamics, like different type
of collaborations and their tendency
to play with strangers, into account
when discussing digital consumption or self-expression.
Social pressure is different from other social factors,
such as social influence and social interactions, that
is being told in previous literature review.
It is rarely explored in the gaming context, maybe
the first time in Fortnite.
And also, we identify the negative association
between social pressure and extra money spending.
So it's different from previous literature review.
We don't know.
So the future research can do a qualitative study
to give more--
give a better explanation to this relationship.
And we also only focused on this one platform,
so maybe future research can do a cross platform
from other popular platforms such as Second Life
and World of Warcraft.
So I mean, this is like a preliminary study.
So we found something, but we cannot fully explain
everything.
So that's why we need to do more.
We hope we get to do more research in the future.
And that's it.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
We're open now for questions.
And I see--
Hi.
Jimmy Zhou.
I'm from Epic Games.
So I was wondering.
A large population of Fortnite is children players,
and there have been issues of social pressure being applied
on children who don't have skins compared
to people who do have skins.
I'm wondering how much of the population--
what percentage of the participants that you recruited
were children?
And did you notice any trends for social pressure
along that point?
Hold on.
I didn't mention that when we designed the survey,
we have to approve it by the ARB.
So we already said that the participants
have to be higher than--
have to be 18 or larger.
So that's why you see that the average age is 28 or something,
because we didn't include the children in this study.
Oh, can I ask why?
Because we think they're--
if we try and do the study with children,
there's always an ethical issue.
And because this paper is a larger project, relating
to live streaming-- and live streaming is also for adults.
So we just restrict the age to 18.
OK, thank you.
I saw somebody right here.
Simon Hoermann, University of Canterbury in New Zealand.
So my question is, did you specifically ask them
if they spent money on skins, or did you
ask them if they had generally spent money
on Fortnite, like Battle Pass or something like that?
Or did you distinguish between those two things?
No.
We just asked, did you spend money in Fortnite,
and how much do you buy for V-bucks.
So it technically could be that they spent money
on a Battle Pass, but they didn't spend money on a skin?
And they would still be in your study, right?
OK.
So even though it's for Battle Pass,
you still have to get this skin stuff, these virtual items.
So basically they're the same thing.
But we didn't differentiate.
Yeah, that's kind of a limitation.
OK, thank you.
Any other question?
Hello.
Andres Garcia from [INAUDIBLE].
Have you thought about the framework from a pay-to-win?
Because all your payings is for aesthetic experiences.
Have you thought about maybe how would it work
in the pay-to-win framework?
Sorry.
I didn't hear clearly.
Sorry.
So pay-to-win is basically, you get actual enhancements
to the mechanics of your gameplay.
The aesthetic ones are just aesthetic,
so it's more social amount.
Have you investigated this side more,
like a pay to win framework in your study?
So do you mean-- so I hear you mentioned like a Amazon
Mechanical Turk or something?
So pay-to-win, what do you mean?
OK.
There's games where if you buy things,
you get more activity, more--
yeah, your gun shoots better or you can run faster.
So you actually change the game mechanics through this pay win.
I'll explain it to you later on.
All right, so Fortnite, the in-game items
are not going to give you advantages,
like you increase your speed or something.
So in Fortnite it's purely cosmetic,
and it will only change like your appearance or something
like that.
So that's why it is very interesting, because people
are going to buy something that will not build advantages
from others.
But they still buy it.
That's why we did this study.
All right.
Thank you.
Next up we have "The Surrogate Body in Play."