Article Preview
TopIntroduction
While digital games are popular worldwide as a form of entertainment media, the popularities of the specific digital game genres vary across cultures. Shooting (e.g., the Call of Duty series) and sports games (e.g., the FIFA series), for example, are favored in the U.S. and Europe, whereas role-playing games (RPGs, e.g., the Dragon Quest and Pokemon series) are popular in East Asian countries such as South Korea, China, and Japan. This difference in the popular digital game genres is, we argue, partially because the experience players appreciate in a digital game differs across cultures. Westerners may appreciate a sense that they are in control over a virtual character in a digital game and feeling that they exert influence on the game world, whereas East Asians may enjoy being immersed in a story and complying to a role given to them in a digital game.
This speculation, indeed, is supported by literature on psychological differences between Western (largely North America and Western countries) and East Asian countries (largely Far East countries, such as Korea, Japan, and China). A large volume of cross-cultural studies provided evidence for differences between Westerners and East Asians in their ways of understanding the external world and internal self. Regarding the world view, East Asians are likely to focus on backgrounds as well as focal objects, exploring the relationship between environments and focal objects. Westerners, in contrast, are unlikely to pay visual attention to environments as they are predominantly occupied with analyzing internal attributes of focal objects (Amer et al., 2017; Chua et al., 2022; Ngo et al., 2018; Nisbett & Masuda, 2003; Wong et al., 2018). There is also a clear cultural difference with regard to the way of understanding self, or self-construals. For East Asians, the self is perceived to be interdependent and changing across different situations and environment; for Westerners, experiencing the self is dominated by a sense of being independent from others, and thus one’s self-status is invariant over time and context (Freedman et al., 2021; Jauk et al., 2021; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Morling & Lamoreaux, 2008; Oyserman et al., 2002; Yuki, 2003).
These sociopsychological cultural differences should create variations in game experiences for digital game players from different cultures, leading to the distinct preferences for digital game genres and styles. For example, the cultural differences in perceptual processes can influence players’ visual attention during playing a digital game, determining to which parts of a digital game screen they pay attention. More importantly, cultural difference in self-construal may cause differences in the ways in which digital game players feel identified with and control over their avatar. Given that identification with an avatar (Klimmt, Hefner, & Vorderer, 2009), and perception of control in a digital game (Grodal, 2000; Klimmt, Hartmann, & Frey, 2007) are key factors determining players’ enjoyment of digital game play, the cultural differences in self-construals can influence digital game enjoyment and preferences. Yet not much research has been conducted to investigate the cultural differences in the digital game experience. To this end, the current study tested the effects of players’ cultural backgrounds on digital game experience, entailing visual attention, identification with an avatar, sense of agency, spatial presence, and digital game enjoyment.