The Influence of Attractive Game Characters on Gaming Purchases: A Grounded Theory and Ordinal Logistic Regression Study

10.29465/IJDMD.201912_11(2).0001

Charlotte Mae Sia Efren；Chung-Ho Su

Attractiveness ； Game Characters ； Gaming Purchases ； Gamer Behavior ； Player Perspective

國際數位媒體設計學刊

11卷2期（2019 / 12 / 01）

1 - 16

英文

Game characters are the forefront of video games - they serve as the models that help sell the product. They are often designed to be attractive, both physically and psychologically. Being attractive has been heavily evidenced to have advantages; this significance led to investigate the influence of attractive game characters on players' gaming purchases. All participants in this research are Filipino game players. Both from a snowball sample, in-depth interviews were conducted to 11 highly experienced players, and 38 experienced players answered online questionnaires. The players described and identified their subjective views, ideas, and opinions on factors that they consider attractive and the effect it has on their gaming purchases. The gathered data has gone through the stages of Grounded Theory (GT), which helped in the creation of the quantitative survey. From an initial snowball sample, 200 survey responses were used after a simple random sampling. Ordinal Logistic Regression (OLR) was conducted to the data sample to investigate the association between the attractiveness factors and the players' reported purchase behaviors. Results showed that attractive game characters influence the gaming purchases and behavior of the players. Descriptive analysis showed high agreeability from the players, while the regression analysis identified predictor variables that influenced the effects. Thus, attractive game characters truly influence the gaming purchases and spending behavior of players.

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