Save-Scumming: A Novel Exploration of Video Game Play

The presentation of this extended abstract will cover an exploratory study that is inspired by our initial call for a psychological exploration of save-scumming behaviours (Farmer & Kelly, 2024), which is a currently under-researched phenomenon in media psychology research at present. Save-scumming behaviours present a unique and novel case study of media-specific engagement across gaming genres and cultural experiences of video gaming. The study discussed in this presentation aims to provide insights into why players are motivated to engage in save-scumming using the principles of self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000) and will explore preliminary themes generated from UK and US data.