The Basic Needs in Games Scale (BANGS): a new tool for investigating positive and negative video game experiences
File(s)
Published version
OA Location
Author(s)
Ballou, Nick
Denisova, Alena
Ryan, Richard
Rigby, C Scott
Deterding, Sebastian
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Players’ basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are among the most commonly used constructs used in research on what makes video games so engaging, and how they might support or undermine user wellbeing. However, existing measures of basic psychological needs in games have important limitations—they either do not measure need frustration, or measure it in a way that may not be appropriate for the video games domain, they struggle to capture feelings of relatedness in both single- and multiplayer contexts, and they often lack validity evidence for certain contexts (e.g., playtesting vs experience with games as a whole). In this paper, we report on the design and validation of a new measure, the Basic Needs in Games Scale (BANGS), whose 6 subscales cover satisfaction and frustration of each basic psychological need in gaming contexts. The scale was validated and evaluated over five studies with a total of 1246 unique participants. Results supported the theorized structure of the scale and provided evidence for discriminant, convergent and criterion validity. Results also show that the scale performs well over different contexts (including evaluating experiences in a single game session or across various sessions) and over time, supporting measurement invariance. Further improvements to the scale are warranted, as results indicated lower reliability in the autonomy frustration subscale, and a surprising non-significant correlation between relatedness satisfaction and frustration. Despite these minor limitations, BANGS is a reliable and theoretically sound tool for researchers to measure basic needs satisfaction and frustration with a degree of domain validity not previously available.
Date Issued
2024-08-01
Date Acceptance
2024-04-30
Citation
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 2024, 188
ISSN
1071-5819
Publisher
Elsevier
Journal / Book Title
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies
Volume
188
Copyright Statement
© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
License URL
Identifier
10.1016/j.ijhcs.2024.103289
Subjects
Computer Science
Computer Science, Cybernetics
Engineering
Ergonomics
MODEL
MOTIVATION
Need frustration
Need satisfaction
Player experience
Psychology
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
RELIABILITY
SATISFACTION
Science & Technology
Self-determination theory
Social Sciences
Technology
VALIDATION
Video games
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
103289
Date Publish Online
2024-05-06