The Basic Needs in Games Scale (BANGS) : A new tool for investigating positive and negative video game experiences
Journal article
Ballou, Nick, Denisova, Alena, Ryan, Richard Michael, Rigby, C and Deterding, Sebastian. (2024). The Basic Needs in Games Scale (BANGS) : A new tool for investigating positive and negative video game experiences. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. 188, pp. 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2024.103289
Authors | Ballou, Nick, Denisova, Alena, Ryan, Richard Michael, Rigby, C and Deterding, Sebastian |
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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. |
Keywords | Video games ; Player experience ; Need satisfaction ; Need frustration; Self-determination theory |
Year | 01 Jan 2024 |
Journal | International Journal of Human-Computer Studies |
Journal citation | 188, pp. 1-12 |
Publisher | Elsevier Ltd. (UK) |
ISSN | 1071-5819 |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2024.103289 |
Web address (URL) | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1071581924000739?via%3Dihub |
Open access | Open access |
Research or scholarly | Research |
Page range | 1-12 |
Publisher's version | License File Access Level Open |
Output status | Published |
Publication dates | |
Online | 06 May 2024 |
Publication process dates | |
Accepted | 30 Apr 2024 |
Deposited | 03 Sep 2024 |
Additional information | © 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/). | |
All underlying data, analysis code and materials are available: https://osf.io/uq8mp/ | |
Place of publication | United Kingdom |
https://acuresearchbank.acu.edu.au/item/90x97/the-basic-needs-in-games-scale-bangs-a-new-tool-for-investigating-positive-and-negative-video-game-experiences
Download files
Publisher's version
OA_Ryan_2024_The_Basic_Needs_in_Games_Scale.pdf | |
License: CC BY 4.0 | |
File access level: Open |
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