Role of gamers’ communicative ecology on game community involvement and self-identification of gamer

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2019.106164Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Gamers' communicative ecology played an important role in predicting game's social aspects.

  • The effect of RAS (RPRs, AOS, and Strategy) was mediated via in-game activity to foster game community involvement.

  • Game coplaying was an important predictor of game community involvement, and gamer self-identification.

  • The discussion of game issues was a critical element of gamer self-identification.

  • Media use, gamers' networks, and discussions produced mediating effects between game genre and game community involvement.

Abstract

While there is scholarly opposition to the concept of game addiction, such as the statement by the APA's division 46 or the scholars' open letter to the World Health Organization, the WHO officially recognized “Gaming Disorder” as a disease. However, there is a dearth of communication studies on the social functions of game playing and game communities. This study aims to demonstrate whether specific game genre, media usage, discussion of game issues, and social network (conceptualized as gamers' communicative ecology) significantly contribute to game community involvement and self-identification as a gamer in such a way that game playing is positively linked to personal identity and social interactions, which leads to the sociability of gamers. Analyzing data from an online survey of Korean gamers (N = 1362), this study found that game communities serve as public spheres, and gamers who played a politically targeted game genre perceived themselves as gamers. In this regard, games and interactions via game playing encourage social consciousness and social behavior such as engaging in public discourse (information sharing and expression) and community activities. In this respect, games are a social simulator that allows for social experience, and such experience may be transferred to positive real-life consequences.

Introduction

When the Korean government elites and the majority of Congress members passed the game regulation laws (Game Shutdown Law,1 2011), they did so from the perspective of gaming as an antecedent to violent behavior and addiction (Kim, 2014). In 2014, Son, a politician from a conservative party in Korea who proposed the Game Addiction Bill2 in 2013, blamed RPGs (role-playing games, e.g., Lineage and World of Warcraft) and the AOS (aeon of strife, e.g., League of Legend and Heroes of the Storm) game genre for causing negative, addictive behaviors due to collective-party-oriented online game characteristics. This line of thinking believes that pressure from peer gamers causes excessive game playing and ultimately leads to game addiction. Moreover, the immersive features of some strategy genre games, such as Civilization and Football Manager, have garnered nicknames such as the game of evil or game of addiction in Korea.

Conservative mainstream media report on supposed game-related social problems, namely, that excessive (online) game playing (addiction) causes social problems (violence or crime) (Park, 2010, Yoon, 2014), and the government policy and academic research seems to follow the similar lines of inquiry regarding online game play. While academia does not fully agree on the causal effects of game playing on violence (Ferguson, 2015, Ferguson and Colwell, 2017, Markey et al., 2015, Quandt et al., 2015), the Korean government has criticized the RAS (RPGs, AOS, and Strategy) genre in particular for violent and addictive behavior, stigmatizing RAS gamers as socially isolated game addicts, and as such, the genre remains under the regulation. Studies diagnose game addiction as a medical illness (e.g., Golub and Lingley, 2008, Kim et al., 2017, Kircaburun et al., 2018, Lee and Kim, 2017) or mental disorder (World Health Organization, The International Classification of Disease, Eleventh Revision, 2018).

There is a dearth of academic research on the social functions of game playing and game communities; research on the educational role of gaming is limited to the area of education or pedagogy (e.g., Steinkuehler & Squire, 2014, pp. 377–396); gaming's positive effects are limited to health benefits, such as those of augmented reality (AR) game playing on socializing and fitness (e.g., Althoff et al., 2016, Kaczmarek et al., 2017, Ma et al., 2014).

Few communication studies have examined the civic effects of game playing. Previous studies have demonstrated that gamers learn from social interactions with others and build communities for social life (Yee, 2009, Yee, 2010, Yee, 2014, Squire, 2010, Squire, 2011, Steinkuehler, 2005, Steinkuehler, 2006, Williams et al., 2006). The unique environment of game playing allows gamers to experience sociopolitical structures, and active participation in game culture encourages confidence in learning and cooperation (Squire, 2010). This participation in games may be considered a new platform for social behavior. However, many of these studies lack the empirical findings in analyzing what aspects of gaming facilitate social behaviors and how the unique environment of game playing leads to building or engaging community. Moreover, new research designs (pathway to community involvement) and the theoretical model for games’ unique communicative ecology/environment and social interactions are needed. Thus, this study intends to reconsider the perception of gamers as socially isolated and violent/addictive and game playing as addictive or violent by providing empirical evidence on the social role of gaming and gamer community participatory behavior.

Therefore, this study a) highlights the role of a game genre's unique characteristics in community engagement and perceived identity; b) presents a discussion on game issues in relation to a collective sense of identity (Walsh, 2004); and c) presents a discussion on game-related media (IT news and in-game media, such as game forums or instant chatting in games) as important information sources for gamers and games as surveillance media. This study applies the gamer's communicative ecology to game community activities and the perceived identity of gamers. Moreover, the concepts of social capital in game community involvement and the perceived identity of gamers were applied. These analyses on gamer activities and gamers' communicative environment suggest new aspects of games regarding the negative notion of game violence or addiction.

Based on the effects of network technology on democratic potentials (Benkler, 2006, Rainie and Wellman, 2012, Wellman et al., 2001), this study assumes that games offer what the networked information economy provides, including more freedom, connection, and reasoned discourse, as well as an alternative platform for the public sphere (networked public), while gamers engage in the online community. Gamer online communities provide gamers opportunities for expression and for sharing information (as a source of information) in a space where diverse opinions are valued, which may lead them to engage in public discourse (as a place of deliberation).

Section snippets

Gamers’ communicative ecology model

Originally, the communicative ecology model (Foth & Hearn, 2007), as applied to gamers, was designed to explain the mechanism of the participatory behavior of gamers and, especially, the role of media and communication as mediators in participation. As communicative ecologists have suggested, this study adopted three layers (technological, social, and discursive) in which communication processes occur: a technological layer involves media that enable communication; a social layer consists of

Game community involvement

The changing media environment leads to the new social phenomenon that affects the way people communicate and participate in social life. In game studies, scholars found that social life (guild or game organization) fostered social capital (expanding social relationships, e.g., Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006) and immersive game playing (Dalisay, Kushin, Yamamoto, Liu, & Skalski, 2015) and that social capital in gaming encouraged civic engagement (Kahne et al., 2009, Molyneux et al., 2015). While

Gamer identity

In 2015, Gaming and Gamer in Pew Research asked whether respondents identified themselves as gamers. Theoretically, the notion of group or self-identification is closely related to “the social identity theory of the group” (Turner et al., 1987, p. 42) and boundaries (Taylor & Whittier, 1992). Van Zomeren, Postmes, and Spears (2008) argue that in many measures of group identification, the cognitive centrality of group membership (Turner et al., 1987) and affective ties or sense of psychological

Data

To test the current gamers’ ecological model on game community and perceived identification as a gamer, an online survey was administered to Korean adults (who lives in South Korea), during a 1-week period, between October 26 and November 2, 2016. The data used in this study was based on an online panel provided by Embrain. Because the research inquiries in the current study incorporated usage of game playing (74% of the Korean population played games with PC or mobile devices in 2015, based on

Findings

To predict a) game community involvement, this study performed a multiple hierarchical regression by organizing the independent variables into five blocks: demographics, game issue interest, ideology, and game play hours as the first block; game genre as the second block; ideologically differing media exposure as the third block; game news exposure as the fourth block; and game coplaying and discussion about game issues as the fifth block. Moreover, a logistic regression model was performed to

Discussion

Overall, the findings of this study provide empirical support that game genre, media usage, game coplaying and game discussion (gamer's communicative ecology) were significant predictors of game community activities and the perceived identity of the gamer. These results are important since they provide empirical evidence that a game genre's unique characteristics and game-related media usage contribute to community activities and gamer self-identification. In particular, the finding that RAS

Implication

By providing empirical evidence on the significant relationship between game playing activities and community and perceived identity, the current study extends the subject of game studies beyond the notion of violence/addiction vs. education/fitness. As stated previously, game playing has social consequences in community building. Previous studies examined the civic effects of game playing, arguing that gamers learn via socializing with other members and creating social norms for interaction

Funding

This research received no external funding.

Declaration of competing interest

The author declares no conflict of interest.

Chang Won Jung is a Ph.D. in School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin– Madison. His research interests include (a) democratic potential of games and gaming communities as a networked public sphere and mobilization; (b) media discourse and public opinion concerning game issues; and (c) role of gamer's communicative ecology on learning effects and gamer's participatory behaviors in a variety of contexts.

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    Chang Won Jung is a Ph.D. in School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin– Madison. His research interests include (a) democratic potential of games and gaming communities as a networked public sphere and mobilization; (b) media discourse and public opinion concerning game issues; and (c) role of gamer's communicative ecology on learning effects and gamer's participatory behaviors in a variety of contexts.

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