• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.69-98
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• 2009

We investigated what factors motivate gamers to participate in a guild and why they continue to be engaged as members of the guild. We find that, based on the result of focus group interviews with MMORPG gamers, social support and self-esteem factors play important roles. Considering both prior research and the focus group interviews we have conducted, we define social support and character control as independent variables. Character identity, guild identity, and self-esteem are proposed as mediating variables while guild flow and game loyalty as dependent variables. Accordingly, we develop the research model and hypotheses, and verify them empirically. Based on our experiences of playing the WoW game, we proposed a research model and conducted focus-group interviews (FGIs). FGIs involve formulating a hypothesis and then collecting some relevant data. FGIs were conducted face-to-face with students of C University in Korea. We formulated structured interview schedules, and the questions were based on our research variables and personal experiences. The questions for the interviews encompassed the following areas: (a) the demographic characteristics of the focus group; (b) the number of years for which respondents had played online games; (c) the motive for starting a game; (d) the number of game-characters assumed by each gamer; (e) the type of game played; and (f) other issues such as the reasons for involvement in the play, the willingness to reuse the game in case new versions were released, etc. On average, it took two hours to interview each of three groups. A primary set of FGIs was conducted with three groups on the premise that there would be some differences caused by character race (Horde vs. Alliance) or by playable server (Normal vs. Combat). With respect to the manner of playing, we found that guild members shared information, felt a sense of belonging, and played computer games for quite a long time through the guild; however, they did not undergo these experiences when playing alone. Gamers who belonged to a specific guild helped other players without expecting compensation for that, freely shared information about the game, gave away items for free, and more generous with other members who made mistakes. The guild members were aware of the existence other members and experienced a sense of belonging through interactions with, and evaluations from, other players. It was clear that social support was shown within the guild and that it played an important role as a major research variable. Based on the results of the first FGIs, a second set of in-depth FGIs was carried out with a focus on the psychology of the individual within the guild and the social community of the guild. The second set of FGIs also focused on the guild's offline meetings. Gamers, over all, recognize the necessity of joining a community, not only off-line but also online world of the guild. They admit that the guild is important for them to easily and conveniently enjoy playing online computer games. The active behavior and positive attitudes of existing guild members can motivate new members of the guild to adapt themselves to the guild environment. They then adopt the same behaviors and attitudes of established guild members. In this manner, the new members of the guild strengthen the bonds with other gamers while feeling a sense of belonging, and developing social identity, thereby. It was discovered that the interaction among guild members and the social support encouraged new gamers to quickly develop a sense of social identity and increase their self-esteem. The guild seemed to play the role of socializing gamers. Sometimes, even in the real world, the guild members helped one another; therefore, the features of the guild also spilled over to the offline environment. We intend to use self-esteem, which was found through the second set of FGIs, as an important research variable. To collect data, an online survey was designed with a questionnaire to be completed by WoW gamers, who belong to a guild. The survey was registered on the best three domestic game-sites: 'WoW playforum,' 'WoW gamemeca,' and 'Wow invent.' The selected items to be measured in the questionnaire were decided based on prior research and data from FGIs. To verify the content of the questionnaire, we carried out a pilot test with the same participants to point out ambiguous questions as a way to ensure maximum accuracy of the survey result. A total of 244 responses were analyzed from the 250 completed questionnaires. The SEM analysis was used to test goodness-of-fit of the model. As a result, we found important results as follows: First, according to the statistics, social support had statistically significant impacts on character control, character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Second, character control had significant effects on character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Third, character identity shows its clear impact on self-esteem and game loyalty. Fourth, guild identity affected self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Fifth, self-esteem had a positive influence on the guild flow. These days, the number of virtual community is rising along with its significance largely because of the nature of the online games. Accordingly, this study is designed to clarify the psychological relationship between gamers within the guild that has been generally established by gamers to play online games together. This study focuses on the relationships in which social support influences guild flow or game loyalty through character control, character identity, guild identity, and self-esteem, which are present within a guild in the MMORPG game environment. The study results are as follows. First, the effects of social support on character control, character identity, guild identity and self-esteem are proven to be statistically significant. It was found that character control improves character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Among the seven variables, social support, which is derived from FGIs, plays an important role in this study. With the active support of other guild members, gamers can improve their ability to develop good characters and to control them. Second, character identity has a positive effect on self-esteem and game loyalty, while guild identity has a significant effect on self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Self-esteem affects guild flow. It was found that the higher the character and guild identities become, the greater the self-esteem is established. Contrary to the findings of prior research, our study results indicate that the relationship between character identity and guild flow is not significant. Rather, it was found that character identity directly affects game players' loyalty. Even though the character identity had no direct effect on increasing guild flow, it has indirectly affected guild flow through self-esteem. The significant relationship between self-esteem and guild flow indicates that gamers achieve flow, i.e., a feeling of pleasure and excitement through social support. Several important implications of this study should be noted. First, both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to conduct this study. Through FGIs, it was observed that both social support and self-esteem are important variables. Second, because guilds had been rarely studied, this research is expected to play an important role in the online community. Third, according to the result, six hypotheses (H1, H5, H6, H7, H8, and H11) setup based on FGIs, were statistically significant; thus, we can suggest the corresponding relationships among the variables as a guideline for follow-up research. Our research is significant as it has following implications: first, the social support of the guild members is important when establishing character control, character identity, guildidentity and self-esteem. It is also a major variable that affects guild flow and game loyalty. Second, character control when improved by social support shows notable influence on the development of character identity, guild identity and self-esteem. Third, character identity and guild identity are major factors to help establish gamers' own self-esteem. Fourth, character identity affects guild flow through self-esteem and game loyalty. The gamers usually express themselves through characters; the higher character identity is, the more loyalty a gamer has. Fifth, guild identity, established within the guild, has clear effects on self-esteem, guild flow and game loyalty. Sixth, qualitative and quantitative methods are employed to conduct this study. Based on the results of focus group interviews and SEM analysis, we find that the social support by guild members and psychological factors are significant in strengthening the flow of guild and loyalty to the game. As such, game developers should provide some extra functions for guild community, through which gamers can play online games in collaboration with one another. Also, we suggest that positive self-esteem which is built up through social support can help gamers achieve higher level of flow and satisfaction, which will consequently contribute to minimizing the possibility for the players to develop negative attitude toward the guild they belong to.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.22 no.7
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• pp.451-458
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• 2022

This article is devoted to the problem of national and patriotic education of young students by means of digital technologies in the conditions of distance learning environment. It is emphasized that national and patriotic education is a powerful means of strengthening the unity and integrity of Ukraine. It is proved that national and patriotic education will be effective under the condition of systematic and purposeful activity on formation of patriotic consciousness in youth, sense of national dignity, necessity of service of ideals and values of the country. Various forms of educational work of national and patriotic orientation at Pavlo Tychyna Uman State Pedagogical University, which were conducted by digital technologies: online thematic lectures, educational classes, round tables, workshops, guest online meetings with famous researchers of historical heritage of Ukraine, online tours of historical places, virtual exhibitions of art, participation in the national-patriotic student camp "Diia" (Action) and etc. The activity of the University Library and V. O. Sukhomlinsky State Scientific and Pedagogical Library of Ukraine of the National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine, which has a significant impact on the formation of national consciousness and social and political activity of students by modern means of information and communication technologies. It is determined that the project "Inclusive 3D map" helps to broaden the horizons and deepen the knowledge of young students, education of a true citizen, the formation of cognitive interest in the subjects studied, motivation to study, raising awareness of Ukrainians on historical and cultural heritage. The study showed that young students take an active social attitude: they speak Ukrainian, want to live and work in Ukraine, respect their homeland, its traditions, cultural and historical past, love to travel and they are tolerant of people with special needs. Promising areas of educational work with students based on the use of a wide range of information and communication technologies, namely 3D games, TV tandems, podcasts, social networks, video resources in national and patriotic education of youth.

• Journal of Korea Game Society
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.35-42
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• 2009

Analyzing the aspects of pattern in MMORPG that has been leading our domestic game industry to the climax, our game industry might be thought to orient the space narrative storytelling method containing the leading life in the virtual sociality to the nature of society. It is essential to have the convergence and linkage between media in describing the lifestyle in the virtual society, which should be operated in a very flexible manner. It is, however, true that we are lacking of the quantification of designing process until now, although the designing process should have the vivid academic functions between media in advance. In addition, the designing crossing over the MMORPG genre along with the game patterns in the MMORPG genre has close correlations with the spectrum of crises emerging recently in our domestic online game industry. In other words, this essay aims at raising an issue that the selective method to the lifestyle in the virtual society being settled down as characteristics inherent to the methods of our domestic online games might deliver the improving effects through the establishment of game designing jobs and compliant plans.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.317-323
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• 2008

The purpose of this study is to show typology of virtual world and to look out how virtual world develops especially in Korea. As paradigm changes, the scientific virtual reality and world wide web are absorbed into 3-D virtual world in Metaverse. The metaverse is the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space. There are two categories of virtual world, the Ludic Virtual World which is oriented from games like MMORPGs and the Social Virtual World which is oriented from network communication system. Compared to North America and Europe, the Ludic Virtual World and game society grow and develop quickly in Korea. It's because Korean users prefer the online environment where millions of people live out a collective fantasy existence.

• International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.64-79
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• 2022

The concept of Virtual Character has been developed for a long time with people's demand for cultural and entertainment products such as games, animations, and movies. In recent years, with the rapid development of concepts and industries such as social media, self-media, web3.0, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and Metaverse, Virtual Character has also expanded new derivative concepts such as Virtual Idol, Virtual YouTuber, and Virtual Digital Human. With the development of technology, people's life is gradually moving towards digitalization and virtualization. At the same time, under the global environment of the new crown epidemic, human social activities are rapidly developing in the direction of network society and online society. From the perspective of digital media content, this paper studies the production technology of Virtual Character related products in the Chinese market, and analyzes the future development direction and possibility of the Virtual Character industry in combination with new media development directions and technical production methods. Consider and provide reference for the development of combined applications of digital media content industry, Virtual Character and Metaverse industry.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.12 no.7
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• pp.1193-1201
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• 2008

In this paper, we propose a automated techniques for generating the gait animation of humanoid character model required in game applications. The proposed method can generate motion data of various styles with intuitive manipulation, and techniques for editing motion data are also proposed. In addition, we introduce an automated tool for gait animation of character model developed with the proposed method to verify the effectiveness of our method. The proposed method tan be successfully employed in motion authoring tools. In this paper, only the gait animation was considered. However, the proposed method can be applied to various motions and can be utilized as a motion engine that automatically generates proper motion according to the state of the character. The motion engine can express various behavior of the character without requiring motion data base which is usually employed in 3D online games.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.26 no.11
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• pp.1306-1313
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• 1999

본 연구는 인터넷 기반 공유가상공간에서 시스템의 확장성을 유지하기 위하여 이동객체를 대상으로 하는 이벤트 필터링 기법을 제안하고자 한다. 제안된 다중격자 모델 기법은 이동객체의 경로 상에서 대표적인 이벤트를 샘플링하는 방식을 사용한다. 이 방식은 메시지 트래픽의 양을 동적으로 조절하기 위하여 이동객체 간의 관심정도 정보를 수치적으로 변환하여 이벤트 갱신빈도에 반영한다. 대량의 이동객체를 생성하여 제안된 기법을 적용한 성능평가 실험에서 기존의 방식에 비하여 평균 메시지 전송량이 50%이상 감소하는 것으로 확인할 수 있었다. 다중격자 모델은 참여자의 수와 메시지 트래픽 상황에 따라 가상환경의 공유 QoS를 동적으로 조절할 수 있으며, 인터넷 상에서 다수 사용자를 위한 3차원 가상사회 구축 및 온라인 네트워크 게임 개발 등에 활용될 수 있을 것이다.Abstract This paper proposes an event filtering technique that can dynamically control a large amount of event messages produced by moving objects like avatars or autonomous objects in a distributed virtual environment. The proposed multi-level grid model technique uses the method that extracts the representative events from the paths of moving objects. For dynamic control of message traffics, this technique digitizes the DOIs of the avatars and reflects the interest information controlling the frequency of message transmission. For the performance evaluation, a large number of moving objects were created and the model was applied to these avatar groups. In the experiments, more than 50% of messages have been reduced in comparison with the existing AOI-based filtering techniques. The proposed technique can dynamically control the QoS in proportion to the number of users and the amount of messages where a large number of users share a virtual space. This model can be applied to the development of 3D collaborative virtual societies and multi-user online games in the Internet.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.43
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• pp.285-320
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• 2016

Cartoons and Animation are convergent arts created with a composite application of language arts described in the form of literary texts and sounds, plastic arts visualized in the form of artistic paintings, and film arts produced in the form of moving pictures. An academic university major in cartoons and animation studies established in late 20th century however, did not satisfactorily meet the needs in academic research and development and the free expression of artistic creation was limited. In order to systematize the major in cartoons and animation studies, an convergent approach to establish and clarify following are in demand : the terms and definitions, the historical developments, the research areas and methods, the major education and related jobs and start-ups. New culture and arts industries including cartoons, animation, moving images, and games contents are not yet listed in the industries listing service jointly provided online by the portal site Naver.com and Hyung-Seol publishing company. Above all, cartoons and animation are inseparably related to each other that even if one uses the term separately and independently, the meaning may not be complete. So a new combined term "Animatoon" can be established for the major in cartoons and animation studies and also used for its degree with concentrations of cartoons, animation, moving images, games, and etc. In the Introduction, a new combined term Animatoon is defined and explained the use of this term as the name of the major and degree in cartoons and animation studies. In the body, first, the Historical Developments classified Animatoon in the ancient times, the medieval times, and the modern times and they are analyzed with the help of esthetics and arts using examples of mural frescos, animal painting, religion cartoons, caricatures, cartoons, satire cartoons, comics, animation, 2 or 3 dimensional webtoons, and K-toons. Second, the Research Areas of Animatoon reviewed the theories, genres, artworks, and artists and the Research Methods of Animatoon presented the curriculum that integrated the courses in humanities, science technologies, culture and arts, and etc. Third, the Major Education considered Animatoon education in children, young adults, students of the major and the Related Jobs and Start-Ups explored various jobs relating to personal creation of artwork and collective production of business-oriented artwork. In the Conclusion, the current challenges of Animatoon considered personalization of the artists, specialization of the contents, diversification of the types, and liberalization of the art creation. And the direction of improvement advocated Animatoon to be an academic field of study, to be an art, to be a culture, and to be an industry. The importance of cartoons and animation along with videos and games rose in the 21st century. In order for cartoons and animation to take a leading role, make efforts in studying Animatoon academically and also in developing Animatoon as good contents in the cultural industries.

• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.29-40
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• 2016

Since the late 20th century, there has been much effort to improve the market value of media contents which are commercialized in a digital format, by fusing digital data of video, audio, numerals, characters with IT technology together. Then by what criteria and methodologies could the market value for the drama "Sons of the Sun" or the animated film 'Frozen', often referred to in the meida, be estimated? In the circumstances there has been little or no research on the valuation framework of media contents and the status of their valuation system development to date, we propose a practical valuation models for various purposes such as contents trading, review of investment adequacy, etc., by formalizing and presenting a contents valuation framework for the four types of media of movies, online games, and broadcasting commercials, and animations. Therefore, we develope computational methods of cash flows which includes production cost by media content types, provide reference databases associated with key variables of valuation (economic life cycle, discount rates, contents contribution and royalty rates), and finally propose the valuation framework of media contents based on both income approach and relief-from-royalty method which has been applied to valuation of intangible assets so far.