Role of Gamers’ Communicative Ecology on Game Community Involvement and Self-Identification of Gamer

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 = 1,362), 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.
Source: Computers in Human Behavior - Category: Information Technology Source Type: research