earticle

영어

As the online game market develops rapidly along with the rapid progress in the internet, the MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games), which allows simultaneous participation of several gamers, market is attracting great attention recently. The behavior of MMORPGs users needs to be considered as the general behavior in online communities since MMORPGs can be categorized as a type of online community. However, the previous studies of online communities did not pay enough attention to MMORPGs where users can express themselves by interacting actively through games and using game avatars. Understanding of the characteristics of MMORPGs as online game communities where users coexist with others in terms of communication and interaction will allow games to be vitalized and users to be immersed in games in a more positive way. Hence, this study examined the impacts of personal innovativeness as a personal characteristic on self-presentation desire, trust of online games, and commitment in online communities through self-presentation theory, identity theory, and social identification theory, considering game design quality and interactivity as physical antecedents of self-presentation desire. The results showed that the interactivity in the spaces of MMORPGs had the biggest impacts on self-presentation, and personal innovativeness game design quality also had some impacts. The results also indicated that self-presentation desire caused trust of online games, and eventually led to even stronger commitments to them.