An Exploration of the Tendency to Online Game Addiction Due to User's Liking of Design Features

Chi-Ying Chen ； Shao-Liang Chang

《Asian Journal of Health and Information Sciences》 3卷1-4期 (2008/12) Pp. 38-51

https://doi.org/10.6412/AJHIS.200812.0038

並列摘要

As online games become increasingly popular, the problem of game addiction has received much attention. The game industries have, understandably, employed various design strategies in order to increase consumer's engagement and loyalty. Unlike previous studies which have investigated factors for game addiction from user's background or motives, this research explores the relationship between game addiction and user's liking for the design features. World of Warcraft (WOW) is a very popular role-play online game worldwide as well as in Taiwan, therefore, this game was chosen as a research subject.
Two sets of variables were measured. One was the game addiction set with five variables: compulsion, withdrawal, tolerance, interpersonal/health and time management. The other was the design set also with five variables: narrative, aesthetics, character, interface and interaction. All the five design features were preferred highly, while the difference by gender was only found in narrative. By way of canonical correlation analysis, the variables of design set aesthetics, character and interaction were strongly associated with the variables of addiction set compulsion, withdrawal and tolerance. This research found that male players dominated WOW and most of them were youngsters, but there was still a small portion of adults aged above thirty. Finally, the academic and practical implications of the findings by current research were discussed.

並列關鍵字

game addiction ； online game ； game design