BANGS!

Are you satisfied or frustrated?

Issue #18 of LFG: Learning from Games is a deeper look at a tool used in games research. It’s a series of questions that measures satisfaction and frustration with video games, with a lot of potential applications!

Hello JOMT Reader!

Believe it or not, rulers (the ones you measure with) allow us to do something that we rarely think about. It’s probably not an overstatement to say that without this something we wouldn’t be where we are today as a species.

It’s not the ruler’s ability to measure things.

It’s the ability to compare measurements against each other. Standard rules and definitions for how long something is means that we can compare those measurements against each other. Those comparisons allow us to do important analyses like which snack is closest to me? And which snack requires the least amount of effort to get?

Comparisons are an important part of how scientists make discoveries. All the tools in the world aren’t that useful if we can’t tell which snack is closer. Or whether a proposed treatment was better than placebo. These standard rules and definitions help us to classify a myriad of things, especially when it comes to health.

It’s not just physical things that can be measured. Psychologists have been developing and testing rulers to measure behaviours, personalities, and motivations for why we do almost anything. You can find a laundry list of psychological scales here.

Curiously, this list doesn’t have any game-related psychological scales. I’m not exactly sure why but what it means is that this isn’t an exhaustive list (I may start to curate a list specific to gaming as an ongoing resource). The focus of this week’s newsletter is a scale that isn’t on the list, which was designed to measure how satisfied or frustrated we are with games.

Why was a new psychological scale needed?

Given that there are so many scales already, why was another scale needed? What did this scale address that no other scale could?

To answer that question, we have to look at something called self-determination theory, which says that humans have three basic psychological needs: autonomy (feeling in control of one’s life and actions), competence (feeling and being an expert), and relatedness (feeling connected to and valued by others). Think of these three things as psychological food — without them, a person may not be able to live a fulfilling life.

But what happens when we are actively denied these needs? Researchers realized that satisfying needs is very different from just their absence, which in turn is not the same as being frustrated by them.

For autonomy, it’s not just not feeling in control — it’s the feeling of being controlled or forced (autonomy frustration).

For competence, it’s not just not feeling like an expert — it’s feelings of failure and self-doubt (competence frustration).

And for relatedness, it’s not just feeling like there’s a lack of connection — it’s feeling lonely and excluded (relatedness frustration).

To address these frustrations, specifically from a gaming perspective, researchers created the Basic Needs in Games Scale (BANGS). This scale fills the gaps where current scales like the Player Experience of Needs Satisfaction Questionnaire (PENS),¹ Ubisoft Perceived Experience Questionnaire (UPEQ),² and Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scale (BPNSFS, try saying that abbreviation 10 times fast)³ could not.

Show me the scale!

The BANGS is a series of 18 questions, 3 questions for each of autonomy satisfaction/frustration, competence satisfaction/frustration, and relatedness satisfaction/frustration. They started with 168 questions and through a series of exploratory tests, whittled it down to 18. I can’t imagine the effort it took to edit a list of questions from 168 to 18, but I’m glad they did so because otherwise, they would have needed to add a “I am frustrated by this questionnaire” question.

You can access the questionnaire here for free and do a self-assessment using your most and least favourite games. Wherever you see [X] in the questionnaire, replace it with your most/least favourite game and score yourself between strongly agree and strongly disagree.

FAVOURITE GAME: WILDERMYTH
(I can’t really narrow it down, but I’ll use this one)

Autonomy satisfaction score: 21/21
Autonomy frustration score: 4/21

Competence satisfaction score: 20/21
Competence frustration score: 4/21

Relatedness satisfaction score: 17/21
Relatedness frustration score: 3/21

LEAST FAVOURITE GAME: any FPS
(mostly because I get motion sickness)

Autonomy satisfaction score: 10/21
Autonomy frustration score: 12/21

Competence satisfaction score: 7/21
Competence frustration score: 18/21

Relatedness satisfaction score: 6/21
Relatedness frustration score: 13/21

It’s probably not a coincidence that one of my all-time favourite games scored high on the satisfaction questions while my least favourite game type scored high on the frustration questions.

How will it get used?

At the time of writing, this article has only been cited once. The unfortunate reality of many of these scales is that unless the broader scientific community accepts them or finds them useful, they can end up collecting virtual dust. That doesn’t mean it isn’t useful or that it isn’t being used: it just means that no one is writing about it.

The BANGS can help researchers understand player relationships with games better, especially for negative or unhealthy relationships. I can see gamers moving through a sliding scale of needs being satisfied (positive) through needs not being met (neutral) to being actively frustrated (negative) by a game (feeling like the game is “against” them).

Developers can use the BANGS during the development process to understand the types of frustrations that players are facing. Even after the game is released, the scale can be used to monitor player disengagement and community health, potentially providing feedback for the types of additional content or updates that could be developed.

Finally, changes to these scores over time might give us clues about our mental health. It is entirely possible that a game that satisfies our psychological needs now will not do so in the future because of different life circumstances. We can even try and apply the BANGS to certain activities within a game to track if there are subtle changes in how we interact with certain elements of a game, long before we decide to put it down for good. An application like this could serve as an early warning signal for mental health issues that may pop up in the future.

Closing remarks

The researchers note that this is only the beginning of the development process and they are already planning further refinements. One notable refinement is a single-question version of this scale, where only one question is needed to measure each of the needs. Another one they mention is to define the smallest practical effect size so that researchers can draw conclusions from more subtle data.

I’m excited for this scale to see more use and become a part of the way we evaluate healthy relationships with gaming.

If you want to read more about this study, including the lengthy development process, you can access the article here for free: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1071581924000739

If you liked what you read, please consider giving this post a like and sharing it with your community! Let me know how you scored on some of your favourite (or least favourite games) on the BANGS!

1. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11031-006-9051-8
This articles describes PENS, a scale based on self-determination theory but specific to video games. Unfortunately, it doesn’t address need frustration, which was a key consideration for building the BANGS.

2. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3235765.3235780
This article originally described the UPEQ, developed by those working for Massive Entertainment (a Ubisoft studio). Although it was developed specific for gaming, the concept of need frustration was not included.

3. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11031-014-9450-1
This is the original article that developed the BPNSFS. It wasn’t developed specific for gaming so modifications were needed to make this more applicable to a gaming context.