Online Game Market Research Articles

ADVERGAMING MARKETING – A NEW AND EFFECTIVE BRAND COMMUNICATION TOOL

Currently, there are many effective marketing communication tools, such as social media marketing, email marketing, video marketing, content marketing, and influencer collaborations. However, the recent boom in the online gaming market has created a significant opportunity for marketers to implement marketing communication activities through online games (commonly called Advergaming Marketing or simply Advergaming, hereinafter abbreviated as Advergaming). Advergaming is a process that combines advertising and gaming, merging marketing communication with games as forms of both entertainment and culture. To effectively leverage the benefits of Advergaming, theoretical issues such as its definition, business benefits, methods, and application in brand communication must be clarified. Using appropriate scientific research methods, such as desk research and theoretical development, the author will clarify theoretical issues related to branding and brand communication through online games. Key points for applying Advergaming to brand communication in businesses today will also be proposed.

Analysis of the Criminalization of the Production and Sale of Online Game Plug-ins and the Regulation of Users

With the advent of the Internet information age, the game industry is booming, and online game plug-ins have come into being as cheats. From the definition and classification of online game cheats, it is found that the crimes involved mainly include the crimes of destroying computer information systems, copyright infringement, illegal business operations, and illegal computer intrusion under the Criminal Code of China, as well as the Personal Information Protection Law and the Unfair Prevention Law touched by the Japanese Criminal Law. This paper analyzes the possibility of criminalization and punishment of online game plug-in producers and sellers from three aspects: the main body of the online game market, policy orientation, and legal improvement. Comparing the criminalization and punishment of Chinese and Korean network plug-in users, it is possible to refer to the legal measures in South Korea.

Study on MOBA Game Players' Non-Functional Virtual Goods Consumption Motivation and Consumption Intention

The MOBA game genre is one of the most influential and largest consumer groups in the current online game market, and its source of income is mainly from the sale of non-functional virtual items, which are mainly used to beautify the game characters and enrich the sensory experience, also known as "skins", and are different from functional virtual items, which do not accelerate the progress of the game or disrupt the game balance. Unlike functional virtual items, these items do not speed up the progress of the game, nor do they upset the balance of the game. This paper explores players' motivation and willingness to consume these virtual goods through questionnaire surveys.

온라인게임산업 활성화 방안에 관한 연구

The purpose of this study is to derive efficient measures for revitalizing the online game market through prior studies related to existing online games, and to provide basic data for follow-up research related to the online game industry based on the current status of online games in Korea and empirical analysis. The literature analysis of previous studies suggested the following activation measures. First, user churn is one of the important problems in the online game industry, and it is necessary to develop and apply a new churn prediction model to prevent it. Second, since the number of cases of using game bots to obtain economic benefits is increasing, a detection technique using motivation-based ERG theory is needed as a strategy to detect and prevent them. Third, the government should create an environment that provides opportunities to solve various online game-related problems autonomously. Fourth, Efforts should be made to leverage the OSMU strategy to provide new experiences. Fifth, gaming companies need to create new business opportunities to expand the market, such as developing the amateur e-sports market.

Consumer-Perceived Risks and Sustainable Development of China’s Online Gaming Market: Analysis Based on Social Media Comments

Online gaming constitutes an indispensable facet of China’s digital economy, catalyzing consumer discussions on social media platforms. This study employs a comprehensive natural language processing framework, encompassing topic mining, multi-label classification, and sentiment analysis, to evaluate consumers’ psychological perceptions of the risks associated with online games through social media comments. This study identifies 11 distinct perceived risk topics, including “Excessive Temptation”, “Entry Regulation”, and “Culture Implantation”. Numerous comments encompass multiple topics, each infused with diverse emotional inclinations, thus unveiling disparate consumer perspectives. These findings underscore the critical significance of addressing potential perceived risks and mitigating negative consumer emotions for enterprises operating within online gaming. Such measures are pivotal to maintaining a brand image, business reputation, and enduring growth. Furthermore, this study extends valuable insights to regulatory bodies, contributing to enhancing administrative efficiency, safeguarding consumer rights, and fostering a robust and sustainable trajectory within China’s online gaming market.

A Study on the Possible Problems and Countermeasures of Domestic Games Going Abroad from the Perspective of Cultural Studies

Against the backdrop of rapid development of information technology, the online game industry is thriving. Although game companies in China started late, the industry scale is constantly expanding, and the total revenue of games is constantly increasing, due to the vast market, technical support, and frequent international cooperation. In 2020, it has become the world's largest online game market. From a global perspective, there is still a significant gap between domestic game companies and game companies in Europe, America, Japan, and South Korea, lacking competitiveness in the international market and facing the challenge of going global. Based on the perspective of cultural research, this paper studies the important significance of domestic games going abroad, analyzes the problems that domestic games may encounter when going abroad, and proposes corresponding solutions, in order to provide theoretical experience and practical ideas for domestic games going abroad.

Profiling the Potential Risks and Benefits of Emerging “Play to Earn” Games: a Qualitative Analysis of Players’ Experiences with Axie Infinity

AbstractThe invention of blockchain technology, coupled with the growing interest in cryptocurrencies, has given rise to a new form of monetised gaming known as “Play to Earn” (PTE). “Axie Infinity” (AI) is currently the most popular PTE game, occupying a large portion of the online gaming market. In this paper, we profile the risks and benefits of PTE gaming, with a specific focus on AI. Qualitative data in the form of online chat threads was evaluated via a Thematic Analysis (TA) approach. The analysis revealed a number of themes including the dominance of extrinsically motivated gameplay in conjunction with negative appraisals of game quality, the benefits and costs of play, and the potential for PTE scholarship models to be associated with exploitation. The results did, however, indicate awareness of potential consumer risks. The findings have implications for informing consumer education, regulation, as well as areas of focus in future quantitative research.

Cheating and Detection Method in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game: Systematic Literature Review

Recently, despite massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) based on the PC implementation environment in mobile games, related fraudulent and illegal activities are still prevalent in response to the extension and diversity of the online gaming market. For game users who enjoy the game as leisure or cultural content, these issues inhibit the game’s immersion or cause seceding from the game, thus negatively affecting the overall online gaming industry. This systematic review provides an overview of substantial studies on the occurrence of cheating behavior, countermeasures, and detection methods. We aimed to scrutinize the scope of generable cheating behavior due to the structural characteristics of a stateful game server. Furthermore, we focused on providing the basis for the key mechanisms of online games based on the conceptual attributes of the MMORPG. A comprehensive literature research was conducted, and the classification of countermeasures and detection methods were systematized. The results of the systematic literature review contribute to the current understanding of how to correctly manage detection techniques and methods for cheating behavior in the MMORPG.

Research on Online Game Marketing Strategy Based on Consumer Buying Intention in Guizhou of China

With the rapid development of the online game industry, more and more enterprises have begun to attract more consumers to use their services and product. In Guizhou, the online game market could be one of the critical developments in the entertainment sector for the number of young consumers. This research focused on investigating how online marketing empowers consumers to market the products, study the various tools and techniques for influencing consumer purchasing decision and brand perception and suggest policies to game developers for game enhancement in the online game industry.

How does media richness foster online gamer loyalty?

The online game market is highly popular, resulting in fierce competition among game makers and prompting them to find ways to strengthen gamer loyalty. Online gamers enjoy interacting, socializing, and building quickly formed relationships, i.e., swift guanxi, which greatly rely on games as media through which to exchange rich messages. However, it is not known how these aspects foster gamer loyalty. To fill this gap, we examine how media richness aspects form gamers’ perceptions of presence, interactivity, and swift guanxi, which help foster gamer loyalty. We used a total of 1350 online gamers’ responses to test our model. The results show that two of the four aspects of media richness effectively enhance presence, interactivity, and swift guanxi, which in turn strengthen gamer loyalty. We extend media richness theory by identifying some novel consequences of media richness, i.e., presence, interactivity, and swift guanxi, and establishing their interrelationships. We also ascertain the mechanism that leads from media richness to gamer loyalty. Our findings identify the drivers that game makers can use to strengthen user loyalty to online games, software games, and gamified systems.

머신러닝을 이용한 누적 로그 기반 온라인 게임 봇 탐지 시스템

The online game market is steadily growing, and as such, there are active financial transactions to buy and sell game items. This paper focuses on developing an intelligent game bot detection system based on machine learning to detect game bots that collect game experience values and items illegally in online games. The proposed research method was constructed by reducing the learning data dimension using big data log information from RPG, AION games provided by KISA"s “K-Cyber Security Challenge” for intelligent game bot detection, and experiments were conducted using XgBoost and Random Forest models. Experiments show that the game bot detection performance of the proposed method with 97.7% of the results using a total of 3,761 account logs through visualization through correlation coefficient analysis of the data set accumulated with log information. The proposed research is currently applicable to the RPG (Role Playing Game) game bot detection field as a game bot detection method using machine learning technology.

The anti-ageing secret of massively multiplayer online game: Managing its lifecycle

It is estimated that from 2015 to 2025, the Global Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) market will be growing at a compound annual growth rate of 10.2%. However, rapid market changes have shortened the lifespan of many MMOGs. This market phenomenon may demotivate prospective market players and thus decelerate the market growth. To address the lifespan issue, we conducted a netnographic case study on ‘TalesRunner’, which has successfully operated for longer than many other MMOGs. Based on the data from over 5.2 million messages from its official forum, as well as data from different secondary sources, we established a lifecycle model of MMOG in conjunction with the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework and offered theoretical implications for both MMOG and lifecycle theory. JEL Classification: M15

Information Sharing in an Online Game Supply Chain

We study an online game supply chain that is composed of a game developer and a distributor. We investigate the impact of the distributor sharing demand information on the game quality investment during the game development stage and the marketing investment. Our analyses show that information sharing does not always improve marketing investment. When the online game market demand is relatively insensitive to the game price, sharing information motivates the distributor to invest more in marketing. In addition, information sharing always affects the developer's decision in product quality. The developer will be less conservative in product quality when it is more certain about the market demand and commit a higher investment after having demand information shared with it. For the distributor, we find that information sharing only results in a higher markup decision when the market demand is not very sensitive to the game price. There exists a Pareto improvement region so that the distributor will voluntarily share the demand information, which benefits both supply chain members.

Genre matters in determining success factors for online game service

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to highlight the importance of the game genres for identifying an online game’s success factors. Design/methodology/approach: In this study, perceived enjoyment, ease of use and quality were suggested for probable success factors of online game service and then research model was developed to identify which factors are related with gamers’ satisfaction and continuance intention. The model was tested on three major genres of online game service, role playing game (RPG), real time strategy (RTS), and first person shooter (FPS), respectively. Findings: The results showed that different online game genres were impacted differently by each element of perceived quality. The findings of this study highlight the importance of the game genres for discovering success factors of online game service. Research limitations/implications: Data used in this study may not be representative of the population of online game users because the data were gathered only in South Korea. If the future study can replicate the results with the data from other countries, it can contribute more practically to the online game market. Originality/value: This study contributes to both online game literature and genre theory by examining the relationships between success factors and satisfaction across various game genres. The empirical test results, which are meaningful not only for researchers but also for online game service providers, give evidence that each genre has different success factors.

Compulsive Digital Gaming: An Emerging Mental Health Disorder in Children.

Excessive digital gaming is emerging as a mental health disorder because youngsters are losing control of their lives by wasting their time by indulging in online multiplayer games. The popularity of the games can be gauged by the fact that India's online gaming market of US $360 million is expected to grow to $ 1 billion by 2021. Video gaming is an obsessive compulsive disorder. The players enjoy creating and building relationships with other online characters, which provides a virtual community feeling at the expense of one-to-one social interactions and real life bonding. In due course of time, the players are preoccupied or "hooked" to the games and display mood swings like irritability, restlessness, and aggressive behavior when they are denied the playing gadgets. Realizing the multifarious health hazards of digital gaming, WHO has recently classified it as a mental health disorder in the 11th revision of its International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) so that it is accorded the state health benefits for its prevention and treatment. The technology is both a boon as well as a bane, the option is with us. It is important to avoid all obsessions or compulsions in life in order to follow the philosophy of "middle path".

Avoiding online game addiction among youngsters


 
 
 
 Teenagers give a change that is influenced from various activities conducted outside the family environment that is playing. The development of information technology has progressed very rapidly, as one form of technological development that is the internet. In line with the rapid development of Internet technology is also triggered the development of new game technology that uses the internet, known as online games, and the online game market share at most is the age of adolescence because of the difficult age in controlling themselves or still unstable in doing something. This is why teenagers are addicted to playing online games. There are factors that affect a person's online game addiction that is internal factors and external factors. Internal factors refer to the state of one's self, while external factors refer to around a person. The case of online game addiction gives a good positive and negative impact. The positive impacts include the addition of new friends, proficient in English, increased concentration and high imagination in making strategies, while the negative impact caused is the lack of socialization relationship to the environment, being indifferent, the concern for the surrounding becomes decreased, concentration decreased, and so forth. To handle someone not to be addicted to playing online games, it is necessary to take preventive measures such as fostering strong intentions to stop playing games, changing gaming activities with more useful activities, reducing time for playing games, reducing time hanging out with fellow gamers, and more etc.
 
 
 

Developing Standards and Strategies for Globalizing the Storytelling of Korean Online Games

Objectives: This study was aimed at extracting and proposing a narrative grammar that the South Korean online game industry would do well to take on strategically, in the context of a comparative analysis of storytelling in globally successful games. Methods/Statistical Analysis: The study set “globalization” as a key word for the industry’s current challenge, based on the view that this crisis in the game industry can be seized as an opportunity. As a method for comparative analysis, this study examined how the “hero narrative,” which is the most classical story archetype, is applied in game stories. Findings: The South Koran game industry has not fully understood the importance of storytelling, as it has focused on technology-centered production contexts, such as videos and graphics. Particularly, South Korean games focused on MMORPG share a trend in which there is a setting but not a drama. They only have settings in terms of basic elements, such as historical background, space, and characters, but no drama structure that develops conflict, confrontation, depth, and resolution. The study developed a globalization strategy for the global competitiveness of the South Korean online game market by approaching the optimization strategy of online game storytelling from four angles, namely “convergence,” divergence,” extension,” and “sharing”. To develop South Korean online games, professional writers specializing in game scenarios should be cultivated. Cultivation of competent writers who can develop scenarios that harmonize locality and universality via extension and sharing, beyond convergence and divergence, will be the only strategy to sustain export of the South Korean online game industry. Application/Improvements: Particularly in the current saturated market, stories with high completeness are in demand. This is the academic background to the problem of developing South Korea’s own creative narrative strategy in order to improve the completeness of stories, which will help to create new markets, and also to acquire global competitiveness.

From E-Heroin to E-Sports: The Development of Competitive Gaming in China

The paper examines the development of competitive gaming in China in the past three decades. In the early years, gaming enthusiasts in China organized competitions on a voluntary basis. From the late 1990s, profit-driven gaming companies began to organize and sponsor video game competitions across the country. The past 15 years have seen the commercialization and professionalization of competitive gaming, and the development of the new concept of ‘e-sports’. E-sports draw participants and audiences from China’s rapidly expanding online gaming community. While gaming companies, live-streaming services, and online gaming platforms are making millions of dollars in profits, the booming e-sports culture has facilitated the growth of the online gaming market and contributed to the formation of a vast cohort of online gaming addicts in China. Parents, educationists, and doctors have expressed growing concern over the social and health costs of the e-sports industry. Academia, media, and the general public are becoming more cautious about the development of the e-sports industry, which mostly targets a vulnerable group made up of the country’s children, teens, and young adults.

Online Sports Betting in Greece: An Empirical Investigation

JEL Classification: C21, L83, L86 1. Introduction Undisputable the development of communication technologies (ICT) brought with it new forms of online commerce. The advent of digital technology coupled with the enormous potential applications of the web, caused substantial changes in the global gambling industry. gambling constitutes one of the most dynamic, promising and rapidly changing businesses around the world. Despite the large volume of studies and internet databases on gambling there is almost nothing known empirically about gambling and its problems in Greece (Griffiths, 2009). Internet gambling is a relatively under-researched area (Griffiths and Parke, 2010). In its first part, the present study, reports some numerical features of the e-gambling commerce internationally and describes its current situation and future trends. At the same time, it presents an overview of the online gaming sector in Greece, highlighting critical legislative shifts and upcoming trends, which will definitely alter the gambling scene in the country. In the second part, the study examines the relationship between the characteristics of the internet sports betting sites and the sports bettors in Greece. The findings of the study, may guide key stake holders, including entrepreneurs, policy makers, regulators, researchers, treatment providers, and industry groups, in forming an appropriate response to internet sports betting in Greece. Data concerning punters' attitudes towards online sports betting, made available through links (banners) on relevant sports betting websites and forums accessible by active sports bettors in Greece. A recent survey showed that internet gambling is still a relatively low prevalence phenomenon (Wardle et al., 2007), making it difficult for someone to present an accurate picture of the characteristics of internet gamblers and their health. Most papers dealing with the gambling issue attempt to establish the active sportsbettors profile and shed light on their motivations, preferences and characteristics in the online sports betting field. 2. E-gambling categories and future trends The European Commission (2012) used the following definition for online gambling services: Online gambling services are any service which involves wagering a stake with monetary value in games of chance, including lotteries and betting transactions that are provided at a distance, by electronic means and at the request of a recipient of services. Due to its embryonic development, there have, and continue to be, several terminologies used to define digitized commercial gambling e.g. remote gambling, e-gaming, e-gambling, internet gambling, online gambling, online gaming, interactive gambling and virtual gambling etc. All these terminologies are assessed as equivalent under the scope of this research. Desktop computers, laptops, net books, smart phones, tablets, internet capable mobile phones, interactive televisions, video game consoles are included in a an expanding list of devices that can support e-gambling commerce or interactive gambling (News agents Association, 2011). According to KPMG (2010), the online gaming market is composed of a number of different types of games, with its own business models and technology. They include: Sports Betting, Poker, Casino Games, Bingo and Lottery. Although online gaming now accounts for only a small share of the total worldwide market, it has proven to be one of the fastest growing sectors over the past several years (Christian Capital Advisors, 2006). By the end of 1996 it is estimated that about 15 online sites accepted wagers, increasing to over 200 by the end of 1997, 650 by the end of 1999 and 1,800 by the end of 2002 (Schwartz, 2006). H2 Gambling Capital (2012) put the size of the online gambling industry at about 24.6bn [euro] in 2011, while the EU gambling market represented the 45% of the world market share (European Commission, 2012). …

중국 온라인게임 산업의 게임사용자 재구매 행위 결정요인에 관한 연구 : 온라인평가의 조절효과 분석

Despite a great performance of Korean online game in Chinese online game market, Korean companies were faced with decreasing market positions in China from 2006. To overcome this problem, I will suggest a research model about determinant of repurchase behavior of on-line game user and moderation effect of online review. Data collected from questionnaire survey were used in empirical analysis on research hypothesis through moderated multiple regression method. There are several conclusions as such; first, perceived value and loyalty of consumer have great positive relationships with repurchase behavior. Second, online review has positive direct influence on repurchase behavior and moderation effect of relationships among them. Third, game company has great efforts to develop online games and game contents which were guaranteed before in price, quality, information, and accurate consideration of online review.