The relationships between violent content and aggression have not been fully understood and explained in video game research literature. This study sought to determine if video game players" flow experience--a psychological absorption—explains the aggression that can follow video game playing. Employing a survey, this project sought to determine if relationships existed among degrees of violence portrayed in video games, degrees of flow experience, and subsequent aggressive attitudes after gaming. In this study, it was determined that a player's flow experience is more strongly correlated with aggression than is the violent content of video games. Moreover, contradicting the common belief that the video game companies make more profit by increasing the quantity of violent content, there is actually no significant relationship between violence and purchase of video games. However, along the same lines of Hoffman and Novak (1977), this study discovered an increase in purchasing intent related to flow experiences in video games. / Department of Telecommunications

This thesis identifies and explores the types of communication modes that exist in video games. Different types of communication are identified and discussed based on Frye's audience centered theory of modes. The inferior communication mode, the mimetic communication mode, the leader-centered communication mode, the romantic communication mode, and the mythical communication mode are all explained. A convenience sample of six video game players were interviewed about video games. An analysis of their self-identification statements revealed that players seek a high level of romantic communication when playing video games. The romantic communication mode makes the video game world an idealized place where the players are able to manipulate their circumstances or show more intelligence than the user in reality. Uses of the communication modes are also explained. / Department of Telecommunications

This study is a comparative analysis of the personality characteristics of a sample of World of Warcraft players (n = 147) and a large normative sample (n = 20,993). The 120-item International Personality Item Pool, based on the five factor model, is used. Independent t-tests were conducted and statistical significance was found for some factors; however, the effect sizes were small, indicating a limited practical difference between the two groups.