First Person Shooter Games (FPSG) such as Counter Strike are often the subject of public
concern. Surprisingly, there is no published research available about playing these games. We
conducted an exploratory Internet survey (n 5 751) in order to gather information about who
the players of online first person shooters are, and why they spend time on playing this
particular kind of video game. The results of our survey on the one hand confirmed the stereotype
of the gamer as it is often presented in popular media: the players of online FPS were
indeed almost exclusively young men (mean age about 18 years) who spend a lot of their leisure
time on gaming (about 2.6 h per day). We also found that the most committed gamers, that is, the
ones who were members of a (semi)professional clan, scored highest on motives with respect to
competition, and challenge in comparison with members of amateur clans and online gamers
who had not joined a clan. On the other hand, our results cast doubt on the accuracy of the
stereotype. This study showed clearly that online FPSG are not played in isolation. More than
80% of our respondents were member of a clan. Also, the regression analysis showed that the
social interaction motive was the strongest predictor of the time actually spend on gaming.
