A Study of Factors Affecting User to Play the Free Online Game

• Main Authors: Hsin-Chien Chen, 陳行健
• Other Authors: Ting-Kai Huang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/zm322g

碩士 === 銘傳大學 === 傳播管理研究所碩士班 === 95 === Online game is pushed to develop vigorously as a result of the advance of the technology of internet. But in recent years, because online game industry in Taiwan has stepped into a maturity stage, and the type of most online games are just like the same, caused the game growth rate begine to glide down. In order to find the strategy to gain the profit, the game company promoted “free” online games to attract consumers. Free online game means consumer can play games without paying anything every month, the way to gain the profit from this kind of games is to sell items and gems. Although the success or failure of this operation modle is unknown, free online game still make all online game market shock. Because of this situation, the propose of this research is to realize what factors affect users to play free online game. Therefore, the basic theory of this research we use is Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Beside, the research extend others factors in order to increase explanatory power, including system quality, game quality, social influence, perceived playfulness, perceived sacrifice and personal innovation. Through the questionnaire on the website, we effectively collected the data from 486 users, and used Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to analyze and discuss it. The result of this study find that the factors influence users’ intension to use are attitude toward use, system quality, perceived playfulness, perceived sacrifice, and personal innovation, the explanatory power is 71%. Beside, affecting users’ attitude are perceived usefulness, perceived playfulness and personal innovation. Just like TAM theory, perceived ease of use would affect peceived usefulness. Finally, all of the influence factors, perceived playfulness is the most important factor on users’ intension to use. That means what user care about when he choose to play free online game is whether the game can give him fun and interesting feeling or not.