The Role of Fashion in the Characters of Online Games

This research study aims to discover the relationships among the fashion of characters, storytelling, and game satisfaction in Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games(MMORPG) in order to examine the influence of the fashion of characters in games on storytelling and game satisfaction, and to identify the following constructs: fashion of characters, storytelling, and game satisfaction. The global game market has grown rapidly every year since the introduction of computer games. The size of the global game market in 2010 was 6 billion dollars, and the online game market captured 64.2% of the total market. The competition in the online game market has become increasingly fierce in South Korea. Millions of people now spend several hours per week on MMORPGs, which have several features that attract a large number of users. First, the world of MMORPGs is open and user-oriented. Many game users interact with each other in the same space and play games in their own way. MMORPGs also have continuous updates, which allow for the dissemination of sequence stories and provides new content to game users. Many MMORPGs are released each year, and each has its own story, characters, and system to attract and satisfy game users. However, due to the maturity of the game market, there are a few differences among the games (particularly in reference to game systems and services). Therefore, the fashion of characters in the game can serve as one of the important elements that provide enjoyment for users who partake in the online game industry. As is the case in the real world, game users in the virtual world prefer beautiful and chic characters to ugly characters. Good-looking people are likely to have better interpersonal interactions and thus develop more satisfying interpersonal relationships, while ugly people frequently fail in interpersonal interactions. Regardless of age, people like to make friends with others who are outwardly attractive. In online games, the characters represent all of the players, even though players are free to choose what role they want to play. In addition, many gamers spend money to purchase items in order to have unique character appearances and fashion styles. People who play games desire to express their identity and aesthetic sensibilities through their characters. The apperance of the characters is the main component that game users use to express their own personalities within the MMORPG environment. Stories and storytelling are the most efficient means by which to understand customer psychology. Using the Internet, many people upload their experiences and other useful information onto their blogs or community sites and share these information pieces with friends as well as with unknown community members. People naturally think in narratives rather than in arguments or in paradigms, and stories that include rousing incidents, experiences, and summaries/nuances of person-to-person and person-and-brand relationships within specific contexts enhance strong feelings of presence while playing a game. An existing game user’s story can influence new game users. Game users share their experiences and the pros and cons of the game with other game users through blogs or gaming community websites. Through these postings, those who were not initially interested in a particular game eventually develop an interest. Game users tend to share their useful information with other game users by using game communities and do so without any monetary profit. In visiting these gaming community websites, game users look for new and/or humorous information. An online gaming community consists of a group of users who interact with each other via the Internet, create fantasy roles, develop online relationships, share common interests, and indulge their need for entertainment by playing their own virtual roles. As new users gather more information regarding a particular game and increase their level of experience within this realm, the probability of them choosing said particular game increases. The satisfaction that customers attain from online games is an emotional reaction that occurs in response to an assessment from the experiences of playing said games. Many influential factors exist that correspond with product features and affect the satisfaction level of consumers with regard to online games. These include the connection speed, stability of server connectors, emotional experience, services, challenges presented within the games themselves and interpersonal relationships formed with other players. Online games use an international set of standards (reliability, usability, functionality, efficiency, maintainability, and portability) for their evaluation, which is suitable for a given purpose such as software quality characteristics (ISO/ICE 9126, 2001). Visual stimulation can more easily lead to immersion than other forms of stimulation, and online gaming mainly uses this visual stimulation through the gamer’s monitor so that gamers tend to be immersed in a game and feel satisfied. Data collection resulted in 235 usable responses from MMORPG users, and the accompanying demographic information included age, gender, education, employment, and time spent per day on gaming. The user age in the sample ranges from 15 to 44, and there were 178 respondents (75.7%) ages 21 to 31 (average 27) and 51 respondents over 35 years of age (10.2%). Males made up 91.1% of the sample, and females made up 8.9% (21 in total). The majority of participants reported spending approximately 2.4 hours playing games each day. The mean score of each sub-construct is calculated and used for further analysis, and the measurement model provides a satisfactory fit to the data. The fit indices are as follows: χ2 (11) = 34.151, which is statistically significant (p < .001); goodness-of-fit index (GFI) = (.958); normed fit index (NFI) = (.947); incremental fit index (IFI) = (.963); comparative fit index (CFI) = (.963); and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = (.095), indicating a high level of validity for the measures. Thus, the measures of the gaming customers’ data demonstrate adequate convergent validity. Examination of the overall model fit reveals the Chi-square standard coefficient of fashion of character on storytelling, which is found to be .805 (t=7.716) and which is significant (p < .001). The standard coefficient of fashion of character on game satisfaction is found to be .556 (t=3.111), which is significant (p < .005). The standard coefficient of storytelling on game satisfaction is found to be .516 (t = 2.997), which is significant (p < .005). Thus, all hypotheses are supported based on the results of the analyses. The fashion of character in MMORPGs is an important element for game satisfaction even though it differs from one game to another. Many games provide various options for fashioning one’s game character. However, online game companies should increase game satisfaction further by providing services such as altering a character’s appearance, clothes, and fashion. In addition, the game environment should support players’ desires to manage the fashion of their characters. In this research model, the storytelling of game users has a positive influence on game satisfaction in MMORPGs, as has been shown to be the case by many previous research studies in this field. For further research, it is necessary to conduct the same survey in several countries as well as across other online game genres.