Abstract:

Despite of global economic turmoil, online game industry has showed a steady and rapid growth. Online games in China have a large number of supporters, According to China Internet Network information Center (CNNIC) in 2014, there are 3.68 billion domestic network game users by the end of June 2014. Apart from large user groups, online game industry also benefits from abundant profits. Chinese online game market size of 2013 has reached RMB 891.6 billion. And it will also continue to grow. At present, there are many international empirical researches about online game consumption. And it has also played an important role to the development of game industry. Comparatively speaking, there are less researches in China. To certain extent, this has restricted the development of China's online game industry. Online game consumptions and traditional consumptions have both similarities and differences. It is of great significance to explore the influence factors of online game consumption for theory development and practical application. Researchers have paid more and more attention on online games consumption studies. This study systemizes the factors that influence online games consumption. The factors include individual characteristics, online game characteristic，social interaction characteristics, perceptual characteristics and experience characteristics. The individual characteristics that affect online game consumption are age, gender and personality. The online game characteristics that affect online game consumption are game quality, service quality, customization and innovation. The social interaction characteristics that affect online game consumption are social behaviour, social capital and social norms. The perceptual characteristics that affect online game consumption are value perception, risk perception and control perception. The experience characteristics that affect online game consumption are fun and flow. Future research may concern and compare the factors that influence different kinds of online games consumption. Also the influences of negative social interaction and online-offline social migration on online game consumption need further research. Past research limitations and future research direction mainly include the following three aspects. First, the current online game categories are various, while the existing research has focused on massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) research, lack of awareness of the other game categories. There are huge differences among different game categories in such aspects as theme, form and goal setting. Therefore, research based on the research of category differences can give us more understandings of the psychology and behavior of online game consumption. Also it can put forward more targeted and feasible suggestions to online game development and marketing. Second, the social interaction is an important characteristic for online game to be distinguished from the traditional video games. It is also an important factor influences the online game consumption. Current study has only considered the positive social interaction effect on the online game consumption, while ignoring the role of negative social interactions. Prospect theory tells us that people have different sensitive degrees to loss and gain. The pain of loss is much greater than the pleasure of gain. In online games, positive social interaction will benefit the players, while negative social interactions will bring their losses. Thus, researchers should also paid enough attention to the latter. Third, although the players usually have fun together with strangers, they also played with their parents, relatives, colleagues and offline friends. Regrettably, there are few studies investigating the online-offline migration’s effect on the online game consumption. It is worthy of attention in future research.