An Empirical Study for Testing the Effect of Game Contents and Brand-related Factors upon the Players' Intention to Play on-line Games : China Experiences

중국 온라인 게임의 컨텐츠와 브랜드관련 요인이 향후 이용의도에 미치는 영향에 관한 실증적 연구

On-line game business has emerged as the most lucrative entertainment industry, with over 4 million players in China, with more than 45% of the market dominated by Korean on-line games. While the interactive entertainment market continues to expand, with many new Korean on-line game publishers entering the market, relatively little is known about which factors influence online game players' behavioral intentions (i.e., intention to play, brand-identity, word of mouth, flow, etc.) in this area. It appears that in this extremely attractive and growing services segment, academics, as well as practitioners, would benefit from investigating the relationships among the players' intention to play, social norms, word of mouth, flow, and the impacts of several other key game-related constructs. A conceptual framework is proposed and a simultaneous equation model is developed. This paper develops the exploratory LISREL model for identifying the factors affecting the players' intention to play for on-line games. Based on data collected from on-line questionnaire survey in China, the validity of the model has been tested and interesting conclusions have been developed concerning the relationships between the game-related constructs. It is hoped that this result might provide the useful guidelines for developing the successful on-line game contents. With better understanding of the players' behavioral intentions, Korean on-line game developers should be able to penetrate the China market with sustainable advantage over their competition.