Player Motivation Model in Online Gaming

Just found a website called The Daedalus Project: the psychology of mmorpgs. (mmorpgs: massively multiplayer online role-playing games)

It looks like it's probably quite interesting. The page I was looking at in particular has a Model of Player Motivations for mmorpgs. Looks like a factor analysis was done; 10 factors were identified which clustered into 3 high-level constructs: Achievement, Social, and Immersion.

While "learning" doesn't make the list of the 10 factors, many of the identified factors are most certainly important to consider in creating an educational game - or an online learning environment. Check it out.