The Elusive “Gaming Culture”: Assessing Cluster Stability of Players' Experience from 26 Countries

Abstract

Previous research investigated whether and how people from different countries differ in their playing behavior by clustering a large sample of players (n = 12,279 from 26 countries) based on responses to a survey capturing 29 constructs including key demographics (e.g., age, gender), gaming habits (e.g., playtime, spending, appreciation), and cultural attitudes (e.g., motivation, perspectives on community, perceived stressors). The earlier study employed country means and hierarchical clustering to identify eight distinct clusters. Clustering algorithms entail a certain amount of arbitrary decisions. Based on this work, the current study attempts to assess cluster stability by identifying clusters of similarity but this time based on a different set of metrics (cosine similarity) and a different clustering algorithm. Despite the methodological shift, the analysis again identified eight optimal clusters, which closely align with those from the previous study, evidence that the dataset can be segmented in stable clusters. However, some notable differences emerged, providing additional insights into cross-cultural gaming behaviors.