Research Insight

Hope for videogame addicts – and their parents?

It’s a truism to say that “massively multiplayer online role-playing game” (MMORPGs) can be addictive. We all know gamers who lost in immersive virtual worlds spend hours customising characters and chatting with other gamers as they seek to level up. Can the madness be stopped?

Using data from 406 US-based players of World of Warcraft (with over 7 million active players, WoW is one of the world’s most popular MMORPGs) to explore how such games fuel addiction, a recent paper by Prof. Christy Cheung and her two former Ph.D students (Dr. Zach Lee and Dr. Tommy Chan)

suggestions about preventing MMORPG addiction while maintaining an entertaining and healthy virtual playground.

Building on insights from the hedonic management model of addiction, the researchers

MMORPG’s addictive potential via a process called

technology to satisfy our internal reward system by empowering users to execute goal-orientated actions.

Like many addictive substances, MMORPGs can impact the mood of players, both positively and negatively. For example, the use of reward schedules—wherein players get something for completing a task — encourages gaming by delivering feelings of achievement. Meanwhile,

many players get immersed in MMORPGs to cope with the negative aspects of their lives. At the same time, technology can help augment these feelings. Since sharing knowledge like an exciting news item with tools like email and social media has been shown to trigger feelings of elevated status in addition to fuelling competition, it’s not surprising that the same does occur with gaming. Indeed, both achievements and immersion – in addition to feed the reward cycle predicted by the hedonic model – correlate directly with MMORPG addiction, especially for younger and less experienced gamers.

Game developers could reduce the thrill of achievement by introducing Voluntary Fatigue Systems to make it harder to gain points once a gamer exceeds a daily time limit. As rewards get harder to come by, players may decide to stop playing until the next day. The appeal of immersion could also be mitigated by letting gamers limit the amount of time they spent online daily.

Since these features might reduce players' satisfaction and impact revenues – something game developers are addicted to – it may be wishful thinking to rely on the industry’s goodwill and gamers’ self-control (especially for younger gamers). Thus, a brave new world of MMORPG might require regulations that, like South Korea’s “Youth Protection Revision Act” , set daily time limits for gamers below a certain age. If not over, the game might be up for some developers!

Prof. Christy M. K. Cheung

Professor Department of Finance and Decision Sciences

Lee, Z., Cheung, C., & Chan, T. (2021). Understanding massively multiplayer online role-playing game addiction: a hedonic management

News

Marketing researchers allied with LCSD to boost museum experience

AHong Kong Museum of Art (HKMoA) in October 2021. The research project aims at examining museum visitors’ experience. This is an extended study in response to the call for future research in the report submitted to the Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD) by an academic team from the Department of Marketing early this year.

Led by Prof. Noel Siu, the team, including Dr. Candy Ho, Dr. Tracy Zhang and Dr. Yan Kwan, suggested

terms of visitors’ experience (artifactscape engagement, servicescape, vitality, satisfaction on the visit, loyalty and intention to revisit).

“Engagement after visiting HKMoA tends to elicit more favourable visitor reactions, such as artifactscape engagement and satisfaction on the visit, than engagement before the visit. Outcome

The results have provided the LCSD’s Marketing Team an insight that post-visit engagement played an important role in visitor experience, especially among visitors who do not visit museums frequently. Henceforth, more attention should be paid to the engagement sequence and artifactscape in formulating museum marketing strategies. The researchers considered this study a pioneering and

of the engagement activities due to the pandemic, a relatively small sample size, among others. This study collaboration also prepared an environment for further social impact studies in the long-

wellbeing, cultural development and policy making.

Students studying in the Marketing Management and The World of Business courses in this semester

marketing, and operation management. The project “sets a good example of research informed teaching and learning,” Prof. Siu added.

News PhD alumnus recognised at international conference for outstanding performance

D

r. Zach Lee, a PhD alumnus of the School’s Department of Finance And Decision Sciences and an Associate Professor at Durham University, received the Association for Information Systems (AIS) Early Career Award at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) 2021 held in December 2021. This is one of the highest

the early stage of their careers who have made outstanding research,

Upon graduating from the programme in 2015, Dr. Lee has continued serving the academia and the relevant industries by publishing research in leading international journals, and providing consultancy to businesses in the online gaming industry in relation to gaming addiction management, promoting ethical and sustainable business practices in the industry. He also co-authors with the School’s scholars, including Prof. Christy Cheung, on topics such as organisational and societal implications of IT use, and has volunteered to come back to the School and share his PhD journey with fellow students, providing top tips to make the most of the 4-year programme.

The Research Postgraduate Programme is now open for applications for the 2022-23 admission. Visit the programme website for more details.