• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.241-269
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• 2004

Online game business has emerged as the most lucrative entertainment industry, with over 10 million players in South Korea. The popularity of online games can be attributed to the availability of broadband network and the presence of numerous PC Bangs and around the country, which have pushed online games into the mainstream entertainment culture. The age distribution of online game players is expanding and a variety of new games are under development to target certain age groups. While the interactive entertainment market continues to expand, with many new online game publishers entering the market, relatively little is known about which factors influence online game players' behavioral intentions to play continuously n 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' intentions to play, flow, and the impacts of several other key game-related constructs n consumer behavioral intentions. Several types of interaction in on-line games and their relationship with the flow construct are investigated, and the resulting conceptual model is proposed. Based on data collected from online questionnaire survey, the validity of the simultaneous equation model has been tested and interesting conclusions have been developed concerning the relationships between the players' behavioral intentions to play, flow, and interactions. Other interesting results concerning game development strategy are also provided.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.420-428
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• 2020

This study analyzed the expression of hanbok in online fashion styling games, and examined the main themes of and user reactions to hanbok fashion styling games through semantic network analysis and sentiment analysis. KrKwic, Textom, and NodeXL were used for data collection and analysis. The findings of the study are as follows: First, depending on the designer's expressive method, hanbok fashion styling games provide typical traditional hanbok, modern hanbok, and dress-like fusion hanbok, demonstrating contents with various themes for different sexes, classes, and situations. Second, as a result of analyzing the themes of hanbok-related styling game contents, it turned out that the main themes are tradition, color, historical drama, fusion hanbok, holiday, and love. Most of them produce modernized hanbok that reflect the situation and utility rather than strictly traditional ones. Third, as a result of analyzing user reviews of hanbok styling game contents, positive factors mostly turned out to be the satisfaction of the hanbok contents, with the users also showing positive intent to wear hanbok. Through this, it was found out that hanboks portrayed in game contents could potentially cause the user's positive intent to wear hanbok. Negative factors turned out to be the discordance between the intrinsic image of hanbok and the game character's image.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.18 no.8
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• pp.1481-1487
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• 2017

In this article we describe our preliminary work to create VR interactive storytelling particularly for building empathic relationships between the reader (or the player) and story characters. As a practical guideline for developing empathy-based VR interactive story, we propose four key factors: first, narrativity considering narrative theories and concepts including the notion of focalization by Gerald Genette; second, interactivity for balancing between narrative and player control in interactive storytelling domain; third, consideration of virtual reality in human computer interaction domain; fourth, empathy in narrative from the viewpoint of psychology and cognitive science. We also introduce an example interactive storytelling scenario based on Little Red Riding Hood story. Finally we conclude with our VR implementation using Unreal game engine and HTC Vive.

• Journal of Korea Game Society
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.79-91
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• 2011

This study analyzes that Korea online-game emerges by naturally developed demanders, not by intentional suppliers(government/firms). Knowledge Ecological Approach is used to explain the emergence of Korea online-game industry. The research shows several knowledge factors that Korea online-game developed successfully. First, newly developed human resource(mainly lead users) play a strong positive feedback in the knowledge ecology system. The interactive system consists of social & environmental actors(local/global technological textbooks, universities, informal education institutes, companies etc.). Second, early developers start up venture firms through on/offline creative communities which give them project based job experience. Policy implication of the research is that the naturally emerged knowledge ecology, where various actors interact efficiently, determines the fountain new industry rather than discontinuous, intentional physical resources.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.395-401
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• 2020

With the popularization of smartphones and the development of digital technologies, new concepts that maximize interactive communication have begun to appear in marketing strategies. One of them is the gamification marketing strategy that combines games with marketing that induces customer interest and voluntary participation. Gamification is a compound word of 'game' and '-fication', and marketing cases using game formats are being implemented in various fields. Therefore, this study will identify the implications of the usage of gamification that has become a trend, and analyze the gamification techniques and factors shown in various cases to suggest the direction of gamification as an effective marketing strategy. Companies are actively using gamification in their marketing strategies in a variety of forms and apply gamification techniques such as challenge, competition, accomplishment, reward, and relationship. As a result of the case analysis, important factors commonly identified in the gamification techniques used in marketing are 'Accomplishment' and 'Rreward'. Using various products and benefits obtained through solving a given mission or task as game elements, it was found to be an effective strategy to induce consumers' interest and participation and to promote consumption by encouraging consumers' immersion.

• Asian Journal of Business Environment
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.5-15
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• 2020

Purpose: This study examines the impact of individual reciprocal preferences on coalition formation. The reciprocal model considers a player's own payoff, the player's perception of others' payoffs, and others' perceptions of the player's payoff. Research design, data and methodology: A reciprocal model is built to illustrate how reciprocity influences individual decisions in a coalition game and its formation. The prediction is examined with experimental evidences from a dictator game and a membership game. Results: The theoretical result suggests that the coalition formation could be unstable due to negative reciprocal kindness. The experimental findings support that negative reciprocal kindness could lead players participating in a coalition, no matter their dominant strategies are. When subjects were essential to make contributions to a coalition, they were more likely to cooperate if they were treated badly. In contrast, when subjects were unnecessary, the reciprocal kindness could enhance cooperative tendencies. Conclusions: This study reveals that the reciprocal behavior could influence individual decisions and reshape the coalition formation. In terms of policy implications, this study has shown that coalition formation could be reshaped by reciprocal prefe rences. Due to the strategic and complicated decision process in an interactive environment, a comprehensive investigation of factors would be required in a climate coalition in practice.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.26 no.8
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• pp.1148-1157
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• 2022

In 2019, COVID-19 changed many people's lives. Among them, metaverse supports non-face-to-face services through various methods, replacing daily tasks. This phenomenon was created and formed like a culture due to the prolonged COVID-19. In this paper, the fun elements used in the existing game were organized to find out the fun factors of the metaverse, and the items and contents were reclassified according to the metaverse with five experts. Classification was classified using reproducibility, sensory fun [graphic, auditory, text, manipulation, empathy, play, perspective], challenging fun [absorbedness, challenging, discovery, thrill, reward, problem-solving], imaginative fun [new story, love, freedom, agency, expectation, change], social fun[rules, competition, social behavior, status, cooperation, participation, exchange, belonging, currency transaction], interactive fun[decision making, communication sharing, hardware, empathy, nurturing, autonomy], realistic fun[sense of unity in reality, easy of learning, adaptation, intellectual problems solving, pattern recognition, sense of reality, community], and creative fun[application, creation, customizing, virtual world].

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.47-53
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• 2016

Purpose - The objective of this study is to investigate the dynamic relationships among Advertising Cost (AD), Newly Registered Users(NRU), and Buying Users(BU) of Social Network Game(SNG). SNG is getting pervasive mainly due to the rapid growth of mobile game and Social Network Service(SNS). It would be helpful for marketing researchers interested in SNG and related practitioners to understand the changes in AD, NRU, and BU with time as well as the effects on one another in mutual and dynamic way. Research Design, Data, and Methodology - Necessary data were collected from Social Network Game(SNG) company. AD, NRU, and BU are endogenous variables, but new event such as launching (event) and holidays(holiday) are exogenous dummy variables. Vector Auto regression (VAR) model is generally used to examine and capture the dynamic relationships among endogenous variables. VAR model can easily capture dynamic and endogenous relationships among time-series variables. Vector Auto regression with Exogenous variables(VARX) is a model in which exogenous variables are added to VAR. To investigate this study, VARX is applied. Result - By estimating the VARX model, the author finds that the past periods' NRU affect negatively and significantly the present AD, and past periods' BU have a positive and significant impact on the increase of AD. In addition, the author shows that the past periods' AD and BU have a positive and significant effect on the increase of NRU, and the past periods' AD affect positively and significantly BU. While the impact of AD on NRU happens after 3 or 4 days (carryover effect), that of AD on BU comes about within just 1 or 2 days (immediate effect). The effect of BU on NRU can be considered as word of mouth (WOM effect). Therefore, SNG companies can obtain not only the growth of revenue but also the increase of NRU by increasing BU. Through those results, the author can also find that there are significant interactions between endogenous variables. Conclusion - This study intends to investigate endogenous and dynamic relationships between AD, NRU, and BU. They also give managerial implications to practitioners for SNS and SNG firms. Through this study, it is found that there exist significant interactions and dynamic relationships between those three endogenous variables. The results of this study can have meaningful implications for practitioners and researchers of SNG. This research is unique in that it deals with "actual" field data and intend to find "actual" relationships among variables unlike other related existing studies which intend to investigate psychological factors affecting the intention of game usage and the intention of purchasing game items. This study is also meaningful by showing that the increase of BU can be a good strategy for "killing birds with one stone" (i.e., revenue growth and NRU increase). Although there are some limitations related with future research topics, this research contributes to the current research on SNG marketing in the above mentioned ways.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.117-139
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• 2013

Research on purchase intention had showed remarkable progress in contributing to the theory of consumer behavior. Despite the popularity of academic discussions on various issues influencing purchase intention, the mediating role of brand recall and brand attitude on purchase intention, in particular advergames, has not yet been well explored, especially in developing economies such as Malaysia. Furthermore, the influence of self-brand congruity, entertainment and brand placement acceptance as antecedents to brand recall and brand attitude are expected to add value to the brand recall, brand attitude and purchase intention relationships. This paper aims to investigate the impact of the mediating role of brand recall and brand attitude on purchase intention in advergames among Malaysian gamers. The antecedents towards brand recall and brand attitude are also examined to measure their influence on purchase intention. A total of 350 Malaysian gamers were interviewed through online survey in this study. The results showed that brand recall and brand attitude mediate the relationship between self-brand congruity, entertainment and brand placement acceptance with purchase intention. Also, entertainment and brand placement acceptance were found to have a significant relationship with brand recall. As expected, brand recall and brand attitude showed a positive relationship with consumer purchase intention in advergames. It was found that self-brand congruity has a significant influence on brand attitude and purchase intention. When users see the brand which matches with them, they tend to act positively toward the brand exposed in the game. This is consistent with Escalas and Bettman (2005) who suggested that the greater the congruity, the more positive the consumer's attitude toward the brand in question. This leads to game usage and purchase (Davis and Lang, 2013). In the advergaming context, the entertainment value in advergames is very important to determine the level of enjoyment and pleasure experienced by gamers during game-playing. Therefore, the more entertaining the ads, the more it will be remembered and the greater the positive behavior of the consumer towards the advergames - this ultimately stimulates their intention to purchase the brand. This study shows the effect of brand placement on brand recall and brand attitude and also purchase intention. Brand placements might not work in games due to the interactivity involved in game-playing as people could be distracted from noticing the brand placements (Yang et al., 2006). However, the significant influence of brand placements found in this study may provide major promise for advertisers. Game players may or may not explicitly remember the brands they see in the games, but these placements may influence their brand recall and brand attitude and could therefore influence later decisions (Yang et al., 2006). In this study, it was found that self-brand congruity was not significantly related with brand recall. The reason for this could be attributed to the fact that this study examined gamers who are highly involved in the interactive medium of games which force them to focus on game play rather than advertisements; the level of recognition to remember the brand exposed in the game is low and contributes to the "mismatch" between the gamers and the said brand. The present study contributes to the existing literature of the antecedents of brand recall and brand attitude in advergames. This study contributes to the role of brand recall and brand attitude as mediators in purchase behavior theory. Academically, the relationship between brand recall and brand attitude is well known in advergaming research, but their impact as important mediators on purchase intention add new understanding in the interactive communication literature. Their mediating role may provide new insights on how they facilitate the effects of self-brand congruity, entertainment and brand placement on purchase intention. Besides that, the studies on the influence of self-brand congruity on brand recall and brand attitude and also consumer intention to purchase had not well-investigated in advergames. This study contributes to fill those gaps in advergames literature. For practitioners, this study could suggest the use of illustrative or demonstrative placements of new products to help customers remember new brands, and the use of associative placements for existing products to increase consumers' purchase intention (Ho et al., 2011). To advertisers, this study may provide useful information to improve their current advertising strategies in games, for instance, by considering game players' congruity, entertainment value and brand placement factors.

• Therapeutic Science for Rehabilitation
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.35-40
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• 2012

The purpose of this review was to investigate feasibility of intensive virtual reality training to improve upper extremity function with brain plasticity of individuals with stroke through the literature. The recovery of the paretic upper extremity depends on regularity and intensity of training as use-dependent plasticity. In resent, virtual reality program has been widely used in the occupational therapy field of augmented stroke rehabilitation. There is a growing body of evidence that virtual reality training of the paretic extremity induces brain plasticity associated with motor improvement. In terms of therapeutic feasibility to improve paretic upper extremity, recent research has explored several important factors of virtual reality training for recovery of upper extremity motor function. These factors include high repetition intensity, high motivation like type of game, enhanced multisensory feedback regarding performance, and interactive task-oriented training. Therefore, occupational therapy combined with intensive and repetitive virtual reality training will enhance recovery of upper extremity motor function after stroke.