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Online gamers form communities and offer game makers various revenue sources. Gamers' continual revenue contributions should depend on their commitment to gaming communities (CGC), where they rely heavily on communication media that carry rich information or provide enhanced media richness. However, no study has yet examined how to use the four elements of media richness to fuel gamers' CGC, revealing a research gap. Seeking to fill this gap, this study constructs a research framework and formulates hypotheses based on media richness theory (MRT).

This study obtained responses from 1,971 online gamers and applied structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses.

This study finds that the four media richness elements have selective impacts on network convergence and interdependence that result in CGC. Moreover, compared with interdependence, network convergence has a stronger impact on CGC.

The findings offer online game makers insights that will enable them to design the communication functions in games to support the formation of strongly connected gamer communities. Moreover, the findings advance MRT by showing its ability to explain the formation of online gaming communities.

This study aims to provide a conceptual framework for exploring the relationship between online game product engagement and online brand community engagement and how these two types of customer engagement affect subsequent offline benefit for customers and online and offline benefits for firms. This study also investigates the antecedents of online game product engagement from the virtual experience perspective.

This study collected data from online gamers in Taiwan. Of the 580 responses, 548 were valid. Smart PLS 3 was used to test the measurement model and the hypotheses in the research model.

The conceptual model is supported. First, the findings show that learning, entertainment, flow and social interaction play key roles in explaining online game product engagement. Second, online game product engagement has a positive effect on online brand community engagement. Finally, online game product engagement and online brand community engagement are crucial drivers of customers’ offline benefit and firms’ online and offline benefits.

Four contributions are made by this study. First, this study explores firms’ online benefit (virtual item purchase intention) and offline benefits, including licensed product and co-branded product purchase intention. Second, this study explores the customer’s offline benefit (offline skill development). Third, it focuses on two types of customer engagement, including online game product engagement and online brand community engagement, and explores the relationship between them. Finally, the concept of virtual experience is used to explore the antecedents of online game product engagement.

The purpose of this study is to explain how online brand communities work to support the denormalization of controversial (i.e. illegal yet normalized) gaming practices.

This qualitative study was characterized by long-term immersion in an online brand community for Brazilian Xbox gamers. The dataset includes online and offline interactions with community members, interviews, and online archival data.

This study shows how online brand community members promoted legal gaming in a market where piracy was prevalent. It demonstrates how community members worked to establish coherence; engaged in cognitive participation; developed collective action that extended beyond the community; and reflected on their own work.

This study identifies online brand communities as a potential ally in combating controversial practices in online gaming; complements individual and behavioral approaches in explaining why consumers adopt controversial practices in online environments; and adds a normalization framework to the toolkit of Internet researchers.

This study identifies ways in which the potential of online brand communities can be leveraged to reduce consumer adherence to controversial gaming practices through denormalizing these and normalizing alternative practices that may be more desirable to companies and other stakeholders.

This long-term, qualitative study inspired by normalization process theory offers an innovative perspective on the online practices of consumers who engage with a brand in ways that create value for themselves and for the brand.

The purpose of this paper is to adopt a critical relational dialectics framework to identify and explore gender discursive struggles about social inclusion observed in an online gaming community, in South Africa.

The paper uses a technique called contrapuntal analysis to identify and explore competing discourses in over 200 messages on gender struggles about social inclusion posted in the local community’s gamer discussion board, based on seven threads initiated by women gamer activists.

The findings show how four interrelated gender discursive struggles about social inclusion and social exclusion animated the meanings of online gamer relations: dominance vs equality, stereotyping vs diversity, competitiveness vs cooperativeness and privilege vs empowerment.

Game designers should reinforce more accurate and positive stereotypes to cater for the rapidly growing female gamer segment joining the online gaming market and to develop a less chauvinistic and more diversely representative online gaming community. Enlightened gamers should exercise greater solidarity in fighting for gender equality in online gaming communities.

The critical relational dialectics analysis adopted in this study offers a promising avenue to understand and critique the discursive struggles that arise when online gamers from the different gender groups relate. The findings highlight the unequal discursive power and privilege of many white male gamers when discussing social inclusion. Advancing our understanding of these discursive struggles creates the possibilities for improving social inclusion in online gaming communities.

Online games based on a freemium business model face the monetization challenge. The purpose of this paper is to examine how players’ achievement orientation, social orientation and sense of community contribute to willingness to pay (WtP).

A multi-method study of an online game community is used. Interviews and participant observation are used to develop an understanding of social and achievement orientations followed by the development of hypotheses that are tested using survey data.

The findings indicate that a sense of community is positively related to WtP, whereas satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the service provider is not. The authors examine the moderating role of players’ achievement orientation and social orientation and find that while a stronger connection to the community may encourage achievement-oriented players to pay, the opposite is indicated for socially oriented players.

Decision makers need to understand that not all players are potential payers; while socially oriented users can help to maintain and grow the community, achievement-oriented players are more likely to pay for the value they extract from the community.

While communities are held together by people with common interests, which intuitively suggests that WtP increases with the strength of connection to the community, the authors find this only applies in the case of players with an achievement orientation. For those with a social orientation, WtP may actually decrease as their connection to the community increases. These perhaps counter-intuitive findings constitute a novel contribution of value for both theory and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether children’s online play and participation in massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs) is leading to the development of virtual retail shopping motivations and behaviours. This exploratory study also examines the influence of age-related differences in children’s social and consumer development vs adults and gender on this.

The study was conducted using two focus groups and ten in-depth interviews with 20 French children between the ages of eight and 12 years.

Results show that children’s online play and participation in MMORPG communities is leading to the development of virtual retail shopping motivations and behaviour through the purchase of virtual tools and accessories by all children using virtual in-game money. But these motivations are very gender specific due to the overarching importance of gender-specific motivations for achievement. Boys engage in virtual retail shopping because they need in-game progress and power gains, while girls engage in virtual retail shopping because they need social status enhancement.

Research should be conducted on children in different age groups. All aspects of the process and consequences of children’s participation in online gaming communities should be examined more comprehensively. Quantitative research is required. Results may also vary with country and cultural context.

First, children between eight and 12 years of age are active consumers (influencers and buyers) for all companies. MMORPGs provide the perfect setting for better understanding of children’s motivations and behaviour regarding virtual retail shopping because they provide virtual in-game money for different achievements that children use to engage in such behaviour. Second, MMORPG companies can benefit by taking into account gender differences in children’s motivations and the importance of the games’ social dimensions and interactions when designing the games.

First, the risks of playing computer games for children in terms of playing violent games and leading a virtual life must be considered and studied carefully by public policy officials. Second, public policy officials that look into online gaming should take into account gender differences in children’s motivations and the importance of the games’ social dimensions and interactions when monitoring online games. These are issues that are not only developing children’s abilities as social actors but may well be promoting excessive materialism aided by the formation of online peer groups.

This is the first study on children’s online play and participation in MMORPGs in the consumer context and will help us to understand children’s mind-set and motivations for retail activities in this unique retail setting. The study results show that children’s online play and participation in MMORPGs is leading to the development of virtual retail shopping motivations and behaviour that are very gender specific unlike adults.

This study illustrates how youth and young adults use boundary-making processes to create a regulated community online.

Ethnographic methods are used to compare deviance models of internet participation with work on digital youth culture.

This paper finds that digital youth draw boundaries around three categories of participation (n00bs, trolls, and idols) to identify new people who need help, ward off bullies, and uphold community ideals.

Contrary to deviance perspectives, this study finds that digital youth use boundary-making processes to cultivate a civil online community.

This study aims to explore how and when learning from others promotes creative performance over the contributor’s tenure in the context of open innovation communities.

The authors analyze a publicly available data set that includes 25,923 innovative items developed by 2,194 contributors from an open innovation community of an online game spanning eight years. Logistic regression model is used for analyzing the data.

The results show that multicultural experiences are negatively related to contributor’s creative performance, and this negative relationship weakens as contributor’s tenure increases. While diverse skills are positively related to contributor’s creative performance, and this positive relationship strengthens as contributor’s tenure increases.

This research highlights the importance of online team collaboration in knowledge transfer through learning from others in open innovation communities. By identifying two outcomes of learning from others through online team collaboration, the authors demonstrate the double-edged role of learning from others and advance the understanding on how the effect of learning from others varies over the contributor’s tenure. These results expand the understanding of online team collaboration and provide a new perspective for research on learning from others.

Increases in video game use have led to mental health concerns, citing greater risk for depressive symptoms (DS) and reduced “in-real-life” (IRL) social involvement. However, recent studies have uncovered potential social benefits for online gaming. Many games provide avenues to extend real life relationships and make new online friendships. The purpose of this pilot study is to use social network analysis to determine associations between connections and DS in a gaming community.

As a pilot study, members of an online gaming site were asked to report demographic characteristics, DS, IRL social support, online social support and IRL people and members of the online community with whom they spoke to about important life matters. Multi-level modeling was used to parse variance described by demographic characteristics, IRL measures and online measures. Linear network autocorrelation modeling (LNAM) was used to determine relationships between network connections and DS.

Members (n = 37; µ = 24.76 years old, SD = 6.55; 100% male; 89.2% white) on average felt DS’ “not at all” to “several days” over the past two weeks. Multi-level modeling including online network measures explained 50% of variance (R² = 0.50, F (9,27) = 2.98, p = 0.01); online connections were associated with DS (ß = 0.46). LNAM indicated DS were associated with IRL support (ß = −2.66), IRL connections (ß = 1.81), online support (ß = 2.40) and network effects (ß = 0.06), which indicates that a gamer’s DS were similar to those of their online connections.

Members with more DS may be seeking help via online channels. This may be important for future research to consider alternative forms of help-seeking behavior.

This study traces the boundaries of online-based social networks and its possible extensions and intersections with offline social networks. It focuses on the massive multiplayer online (MMO) gaming community. Most online gaming research has only addressed one side of the equation, that is, the online aspect of social interaction, omitting the offline context. The primary objective is to look at both offline and online social contexts of gamers. The data analyzed here are part of a bigger research project. Using a sample of 242 respondents and a total of 1,452 social ties (three online and three offline) this work addresses the differences and similarities between online gamer’s offline and online networks. Around 72% of the participants were between the ages of 18 and 37. This group provides insight into the management of social interactions and ties in the digital age among millennials and the coming-of-age of Generation Z. The analysis suggests that overall offline ties are slightly more important than online. Still, this does not imply that online ties are not meaningful at all. The length of their online relationships plays a significant role in how participants qualify their ties. Most participants that had not met face-to-face were willing to meet their online ties. They also reported sharing personal and everyday life matters with their online social network at a lower rate of their offline network. Time spent with online relationships stemming from online gaming and a cooperative environment is more likely to be considered higher quality time. This suggests that in MMOs the gap between online and offline relationships is becoming narrower.