• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.103-125
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• 2006

Online game business has emerged as the most lucrative entertainment industry, with over 10 million players in South Korea and over 30million in Japan in 2005. While the interactive entertainment market continues to expand, with many new online game publishers entering the market, relatively little theory has been developed about which factors influence online gamers' behavioral intentions (i.e., loyalty, satisfaction, words of mouth, etc.) in this area. The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationships among the gamers' satisfaction, trust toward game publishers, the role of online game community, social reputation, and the managerial support of game publishers. We also examine the differences between Korean and Japanese gamers concerning the relationships of these key success factors. The structural model is tested with the data from entire data samples (i.e., Korean and Japanese gamers pooled together) and each of the sub-samples (i.e., Korean and Japanese gamers taken separately). Properties of the causal paths, including standardized path coefficients, the significance of difference, and variance explained for Trust and Satisfaction in the hypothesized model, are presented. Following the model test, we conduct a test of the differences in path coefficients between Korean and Japanese gamers. Statistical results show that, compared to Japanese gamers, Korean gamers had a greater salient effect on Social Reputation in determining. Trust, in addition to placing a greater emphasis on Support of Game Publishers in determining Social Reputation. Other interesting results concerning game Publishers' strategy are also presented.

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.29
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• pp.173-196
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• 2006

Online game business has emerged as the most lucrative entertainment industry, with over 10 million players in South Korea and over 30 million in Japan in 2005. The popularity of online games can be attributed to the availability of broadband network, pushing 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 Japan, relatively little is known about which factors influence online game players' behavioral intentions to play continuously in this area. This study investigates major factors which influence the acceptance of online game services based on the theoretical backgrounds of the technology acceptance model(TAM) and the flow theory. This paper extended the Davis' TAM model by including the flow concept as another major factor toward the intention to play online game. Based on data collected from online questionnaire survey, we show that the proposed model provides an adequate fit to the data, and that the flow experience is another important factor influencing the intention to play online game, as well as the perceived ease of use.

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.26
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• pp.285-313
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• 2005

Online game business has emerged as the most lucrative entertainment industry, with over 10 million players in South Korea and over 30 million in Japan in 2005. The popularity of online games can be attributed to the availability of broadband network, pushing 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 Japan, relatively little is known about which factors influence online game players' behavioral intentions to play continuously in this area. It appears that in this extremely attractive and growing services segment, academics, as well as practitioners, would benefit from investigating the difference, among the types of players, in demographic and social trends, perceptions related to game-design factors, and attitude toward the games. Based on data collected from online questionnaire survey, the differences between hardcore and casual players have been analyzed, and interesting conclusions have been provided concerning the online-game design and development strategies for Japan online-game players.