• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.117-137
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• 2008

Using the service innovation system model, the development of Korean online game industry is analyzed. The model proposed by Gallouj (2002) is modified in order to reflect IT service characteristics such as network externalities. Success factors and innovations patterns of Korean online game industry are examined. First, at the early stage of her growth, Korean online game industry was not supported or coordinated by any Government policies unlike DRAM, CDMA or TFT-LCD. Many parts of technical and service innovations were unintentionally initiated by online game developing ventures without predeterminde strategies. Second, the online game industry is basically a service industry so that users' needs and technical and service characteristics are intertwined to produce innovation. The innovation system of the online game industry is quite different from conventional product technological innovation systems in a sense that there are no blueprints for innovation as well as major players in the system. Third, Government's policies for promotion of IT industry such as the broadband infrastructure installation policy, the hi-tech venture promotion policy and the military exemption policy contributed greatly to development of the online game industry. However, these policy tools were not intended for online game industry but in the end gave a great impact on the service innovation system of the online game industry.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.9 no.12
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• pp.1657-1668
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• 2006

The last few years have represented a boom for the online gaming industry. Internet-based online games have been an increasingly popular form of entertainment. The gaming industry estimates there will be over 26 million online gaming participants in 2002. The rapid development of online game content and related information technology will increase the size of the industry and have a profound impact on many aspects of our lives and our society. This paper develops the exploratory LISREL model for identifying the factors affecting the players' loyalty to a specific brand of online game. The concepts of flow, word of mouth, feedback, challenge, social norms, and online community activities, etc, are all introduced into the model, as the independent variables directly and indirectly affecting loyalty. Based on data collected from an online survey, the validity of the model has been tested and interesting conclusions have been developed concerning the relationships between loyalty and flow, word of mouth, and other independent variables. It is hoped that this result might provide useful guidelines for developing successful online game content.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.123-135
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• 2009

The considerable progress of IT industry has changed the industrial structure and lifestyle of our society. One of the remarkable fields of IT industry is online game industry. It showed rapid growth for the past decade. But in recent years online game industry faced with the limit of its growth for a number of reasons. To overcome such situation, online game companies should improve functions of game and analyze their customer's needs for sustainable growth through increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty. The purpose of the study is to investigate and evaluate the factors of online game service quality and the relation of customer satisfaction and loyalty. SPSS 14.0 and AMOS 7.0 are used for experimental research. Through reliability and validity test, service quality factors influencing the customer satisfaction are appeared to be 5 latent variables(reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, tangibles). In addition, by structural equation model and covariance structural model, the result showed that empathy is the most influenced factor to customer satisfaction and customer satisfaction has positive effect on customer loyalty. The results of this research have important implications for explaining an mechanism for service quality of online game, customer satisfaction and loyalty and they might provide operational guidelines to the online game service company.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.138-150
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• 2016

This study aims to analyze the structure and characteristics of the domestic online game industry using network analysis. In particular, two-mode network analysis is employed to measure the network structure, centrality, and cluster for two types of online game platforms, online games and mobile games, from 1996 to 2014. We also conduct a dynamic analysis to capture the structural changes in the ecosystem by internal and external environmental changes before and after turning point for each online game platform. It is revealed that the online game econsystem has the higher number of clusters and higher concentration ratio than those of mobile game ecosystem. In dynamic analysis, both platforms exhibit similar trends over time with the increasing number of clusters, enlargement of largest cluster's size, and decreasing concentration ratio. This study is expected to provide fruitful implications for strategic decision making of online game companies and policy making for the online game industry.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.71-88
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• 2009

The Korean online gaming industry has seen rapid growth since the boom of information technology (IT) related industries, especially Internet and PC-bang or local area network (LAN) use, throughout the country. Online games are real-time games in which two or more players meet, compete, and cooperate in the same game space using the same communication network. Even though the growth rates of IT-related industries have recently slowed, the growth of the online gaming industry has increased, and Korean firms are expanding their businesses to countries all over the world. However, the online gaming industry is becoming an oligopoly, in which 4-5 leading companies occupy most online gaming markets. This situation presents a disadvantage to the Korean online gaming industry, since online players usually seek a diversity of online gaming contents and high quality online game services. Therefore, small- and medium-sized game developers must survive in this market by upgrading the quality of their online gaming services in an effort to provide differentiated goods and services in monopolistic competition markets. However, most venture companies in the online game industry, whether new or previously existing, are not able to obtain adequate financing. The objective of this paper is to examine the management environment for medium- and small-sized game developers in the Korean online gaming industry. By introducing the case of Grigon Entertainment, we try to identify the source of difficulty obtaining external financing for Korean venture firms in the online gaming industry.

• Journal of Korea Society of Digital Industry and Information Management
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.167-179
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• 2016

Online games, by a massive influx of many players, it has diverse situations in which emotion is generated. Emotion plays an important role that helps players to interact and immerse in game. In the previous games, simple structures are used to express emotion. By increasing the user's needs of emotion in the game, it is necessary to structure a various type of emotion. In this paper, the game components were classified as background, object, and character in order to analyze emotion structurally in game. We defined how to use the rule of emotion, and applied to League of legend, Cyphers and World of Warcraft which belong to the AOS genre. The AOS game is well-suited for analyzing emotion structure, because a various emotional changes and situations can arise in the game. Through this paper, it was discovered similarities emotion to be used in online games. It is expected to generalize the emotion in the game by analyzing the emotional structure of more games in future.

• Journal of Korea Game Society
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.69-78
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• 2011

2010, the China's online game industry has developed more than ten years. With the fast development of the China's online game industry, the china joy came into true in 2004. After 7 years of development China Joy has become Asia's largest exhibition game. The paper which from the china joy perspective compare and analyze the development process of china joy with the other two related exhibition E3 and TGS. The paper also select 6 important indicators to evaluate the china joy 1) the absolute number of the audiences from the show2) the number of the international visitors 3) the number of participating companies and corporate types4) the number of exhibitors and online game product quality5) the contents of the show 6) the international influence. From this perspective, the paper tries to figure out the status of the China's online game industry in the world online game industry. And after analysis 6 indicators we can make a conclusion of the international status of China joy and international influence. It also tries to find out the main problems in China's online game industry.

• Journal of Korea Game Society
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.69-79
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• 2011

Online game industry and item trade have grown up fast after 2000. And there has been a perspective that online game and item trade are the cause of the crimes, especially cyber crime like hacking, virus. But there was no positive research about the opinion, so this article studies the relations among online game, item trade and crime. The results suggest that online game and item trade maybe a cause of cyber crime and property crime. But online game and item trade don't increase the total number of crime. That means that online game and item trade substitute the way how crime happens. Online game and item trade substitute no-property crime to property crime.

• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.1-30
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• 2011

This paper analyzes system builders and their human networks of the Korean online game industry. By the early 2000s, Korea became one of the major online gaming countries in the world. In this period, important factors included the existence of system builders and their solid human networks. The few innovators who assisted the breakthrough of the development of the online gaming industry formed a human network in universities and IT companies. They shared innovations in information and collectively learned the conventions of the industry. In their achievement, the human networks which had already fully formed in the late 1990s became more noticeable. This paper, with its historical approach, will complement the limits shown by existing researches that, in their effort to find the causes for the success of the Korean online game industry, focus rather narrowly on the conditions of the period during which online games were becoming popular.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.85-97
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• 2001

Online games have become the focus of entertainment and multimedia industries as the developments in computer technologies are accelerated and the use of the Internet diffuses broadly. In spite of such growth of online games, academic discussions regarding online games are relatively limited. This research examines several factors that affect player loyalty to online games. In this research, the loyalty is classified into two categories, the behavioral loyalty measured by the intensity, volume, and frequency of use, and the cognitive loyalty measured by the degree of immersion in online games. In this research, an integrated model to explain and predict player loyalty to online games in proposed. Two studies are conducted to test to research model. Throughout analyzing 334 respondents, the first study finds that the impulsive personality of individual players significantly affects both behavioral loyalty and cognitive loyalty. Additionally, it finds that, whereas the behavioral loyalty is influenced by the convenience of online game playing, the cognitive loyalty is influenced by the motive of game playing and the playfulness of games. The second study finds that the behavioral loyalty differs across demographic differences of players (age and occupation), preferred online games of players, and online game playing locations, but the cognitive loyalty differs across only age differences of players. This research has opened a forum for social awareness about the online game culture, provided information to guide online game producers to prepare customer-oriented online games, and created a foundation for academic research on online game industry.