| Summary: | 碩士 === 元智大學 === 經營管理碩士班(行銷學程) === 104 === With the rapid development of Internet, online games have become one of the most important areas for entertainment and leisure. In online games, people use characters, items, and costumes to build their self-construction and self-presentation. Furthermore, people show their self-presentation through the process of interaction within the online game in order to keep a relationship with other online game players. One of the most popular online games is LOL (League of Legends) which is still famous for online game players. Gamers tend to perform themselves by using the rewards and power gained from the game. From the perspective of LOL gamers, the research explores how LOL gamers construct and present themselves within the game by using social exchange theory. The research aims to study rewards, power, commitment, trust and emotion among other important factors in social exchange theory. The methodology of the research is Netnography. The research collects the data by online observation and in-depth interview to understand how gamers build their self-construction and use different strategies to present their personal image.
The research result found that when gamers choose symbolic items, they will take the factors of social exchange theory into consideration. Moreover, gamers have different consideration based on the stage they are in. In the early stage, gamers are mainly affected by their life and media experience and tend to construct their basic profile. However, in the mature stage, they are affected by teamwork and tend to construct a particular image to highlight their self-construction. Also, the research found that in the early stage, gamers are influenced by the reward system which provides incentives for them to participate in the game. In the mature stage, they are influenced by power, commitment and trust which enhance their self-presentation behavior in teamwork. With numerous presentation strategies, gamers use the modest strategy, the opinion conformity strategy, the modeling strategy and the gender switch strategy to present themselves. In addition, gamers’ self-presentation behavior is also affected by the emotion which influences the interaction between gamers and team members.
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