Abstract
Video games continue to grown in popularity and presently account for annual revenues in the billions of dollars. Although the technologies underlying a modern video game are well understood, the characteristics of a game that make it a success are not. The Engagement Questionnaire (EQ) is introduced in an attempt to capture those dimensions that are thought to influence the degree to which a user becomes engaged while playing a video game. Our goal was to develop a metric that could be applied to a broad range of video game genres (e.g., action, adventure, strategy, sports) and video game users (e.g., expert/novice, male/female, young/old). Factor analyses of data representing 243 participants suggested the existence of five stable factors among 46 questionnaire items. These dimensions were labeled Interest, Authenticity, Curiosity, Involvement and Fidelity. Though further empirical testing is necessary, we expect that the questionnaire will prove to be a useful tool for the appraisal of video games, as well as for the identification of critical differences between those who play them.
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