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Active participation is critical to the survival and development of the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game community. However, this issue has not received much attention in the information systems literature. To address this issue, we develop a tripartite model that accounts for the roles of behavioral dedication, constraint, obligation mechanisms on active participation in the MOBA community.

The research model is empirically validated by online survey data among 971 users of a popular MOBA community.

The results show that perceived enjoyment, perceived escapism, and affective commitment are key behavioral dedication factors, which further promote active participation in the MOBA community. In addition, past investment, self-efficacy for change, and calculative commitment are important behavioral constraint factors, which ultimately influence active participation in the MOBA community. Finally, subjective norm, group norm, social identity, and normative commitment are influential behavioral obligation factors, which in turn facilitate active participation in the MOBA community.

This study contributes to the theoretical understanding of active participation in the MOBA community and offers practical guidance for promoting active participation in the community.

Playing video gaming is one of the most popular forms of leisure activities. This study looks into a specific video game genre, under the category of Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) games. The purpose of this research is to investigate the factors that lead to the consumption of MOBA games. Three factors, imaginal, emotional and sensory experiences, are investigated through an integration of the hedonic consumption model, Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Uses and Gratification Theory (UGT).

The study analyses a sample of 292 MOBA game players using the PLS-SEM model. The study comprises two stages; in the first stage, an estimation model was used to test the constructs' quality and legitimacy. In the second stage, we assessed the theoretical model to test the relationship between the principle constructs.

The study found that factors related to emotional experiences, namely enjoyment, emotional involvement, and arousal, led to greater intention to play MOBA games. Similarly, two factors related to imaginal experiences, escapism and role projection, also positively impacted while fantasy carried a negative impact. The study also found that sensory experiences had a significant positive impact on the intention to play MOBA games. Lastly, a positive correlation was also found between the intention to use and usage behavior in MOBA games.

This study contributes to the theoretical understanding of the playful-consumption experiences of pleasure-oriented information systems (I.S.) that is MOBA games that derive behavioral intention to play MOBA games, which in turn determines the usage behavior of MOBA players. The study also incorporates the uses and gratification theory to uncover the needs and experiences that trigger MOBA games' behavioral intention and its further impact on gamers' usage behavior. The study also presents useful insights for game developers and other relevant stakeholders in game development.

With the widespread popularity of Esports, Esports game addiction has attracted wide attention. This research explores the causes of Esports game addiction among college students in Mainland China and the influence of specific participation motivation and self-control on college students’ Esports game addiction.

This research applied the organismic integration theory (OIT) instead of the basic psychological needs theory using Honor of Kings, the most popular Esports game in the form of multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) among Chinese college students. A total of 339 completed questionnaires were finally analyzed. SmartPLS 2.0 M3 was used to perform the PLS-SEM analysis on the relationship between self-control, participation motivation and Esports game addiction.

Only introjected regulation and a motivation positively impacted Esports game addiction, while intrinsic motivation, integrated regulation, identified regulation and external regulation had surprisingly no effect on Esports game addiction.

Scant studies have explored Esports game addiction in MOBA games, especially in Asia. Results showed that parents, schools and society should consciously strengthen the education and exercise of students’ self-control ability to prevent Esports game addiction. Game developers should appropriately adjust game structures and functions to prevent college students from using them as social tools or games to escape reality.

The purpose of this paper is to facilitate understanding of how to convert free players to paid consumers in free-to-play games.

Drawing on the consumption value framework and affordance theory, the present study argues that in-game purchase behaviors are determined by multiple consumption values of in-game items. The perceptions of consumption values were influenced by game affordances. The model was tested, using data from an empirical survey with 2,006 free-to-play game players.

Monetary, enjoyment and social values of in-game items positively predict purchase behaviors in free-to-play games. Game fairness and balance of challenges and skills significantly influence perceived enjoyment value.

The findings of this study provide operable implications to facilitate in-game consumption. The model was tested within the context of free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games; however, caution is advisable when generalizing the findings to other subgenre of games.

This study extended and thus validated the consumption value framework in the context of free-to-play MOBA games. This study explored the antecedents of consumption values from the perspective of game affordance.

Toxic behavior in multiplayer video games diminishes the potential revenue of gaming companies by spreading a bad mood, negatively affecting game play, and subsequently leading to the churn of players. However, research investigating why toxic behavior occurs is still scarce. To address this issue, this study disjunctively tests three different theoretical approaches (social cognitive theory, theory of planned behavior, and online disinhibition effect) to explain toxic behavior and propose a unified theory of toxic behavior.

In total, 320 respondents participated in a questionnaire study. This study analyzes the data with covariance-based statistics (i.e. regression analysis and structural equation modelling), and the approach is twofold. First, the hypotheses of three theories are disjunctively tested. Second, a unified theory of toxic behavior is proposed.

The results of this study indicate that online disinhibition best explains toxic behavior, whereby toxic behavior victimization, attitude, and behavioral control also play an important role.

The findings of this study offer an opportunity to better understand a contemporary and especially meaningful form of negative behavior online.

To maintain revenue and popularity, the computer game industry can use the findings of this study to prevent and better address toxic behavior and its negative consequences.

Toxic behavior among video game players is a relatively new and unexplored phenomenon; therefore, this study makes a valuable contribution to the research field by testing the explanatory power of three theoretical approaches and proposing a unified theory of toxic behavior.

The inclusion of esports as an official event in the Hangzhou Asian Games is an important step towards the institutionalisation of esports. The significance of this event marks that Asia once again takes a lead in the global esportisation. This chapter investigates a series of history events in the inclusion process of esports into the comprehensive Games in Asia using process sociology and actor network theory (ANT). This study will analyse the type characteristics of esports events in Hangzhou Asian Games, whilst examining how key stakeholders' interact and balance in the network composed of international sports organisations, host of the event, emerging esports organisations and esports game companies. The chapter also examines the functions of global game industrial economic geography, local cultural politics, esports geopolitics and Olympic values in esports sportization, aiming to reveal the implications of esports inclusion in the Asian Games on the debate of whether esports meets the criteria to be classified as a ‘sport’ and its enlightenment of digital strategy to the inclusion esports in the Olympics.

The balance patch is an important but not well studied area to maintain game fairness and improve player entertainment. In this paper, we examine the effect of balance patch on player's character preference and further explore the moderating effect of psychological distance and character selection pattern.

In study 1, a web crawler was used to get server-side data of 40, 974 multi-player online battle arena (MOBA) players through official application programming interfaces (APIs). A paired-T test and a stepwise regression were performed to verify the hypothesis. In study 2, a 2-patch type (buff vs nerf) × 2 psychological distance (near vs distant) × 2 character selection pattern (stable vs variable) between-subjects design was adopted to confirm the empirical conclusions through questionnaire survey design and further explored the mediating effect of patch adjustment perception.

The analyzed results showed that the buff patch led to an increase in players' character preference, while the nerf patch led to a decrease in players' character preference. Moreover, the main effect was mediated by patch adjustment perception. Furthermore, psychological distance and character selection pattern both moderated the relationship between balance patch and character preference changes. The character preference of the near psychological distance increased more significantly elicited by buff patches and decreased more significantly in an adverse situation. Similarly, players with variable selection pattern of characters were more sensitive to the stimuli, and the character preference of the variable group changed more significantly than that of the stable group caused by balance patch release.

This paper studies the influence of a patch on the balance of character strength on player preference, which expands the research on game balance and fairness. The present results contribute to the theoretical research on consumer behavior of psychological distance and character selection pattern elicited by balance patches. Meanwhile, the results indicate that psychological distance theory can apply to the study of the relationship between players and virtual characters.

The rise and popularity of digitalization have made the addictive use in the virtual world more common, which has aroused wide attention from academia and public. Uncovering the underlying mechanism of addictive use is essential to address this serious issue.

By utilizing the context of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), this study developed virtual-domain perfectionism of seeking excellence and avoiding failure from the dual process model of perfectionism and identified four affordances in MMOGs from the perspective of technology affordance. The authors surveyed 302 valid samples in MMOGs to empirically test the research model.

The results demonstrate that two processes of virtual-domain perfectionism influence addictive use positively in MMOGs. Technology affordances perform as the antecedents of virtual-domain perfectionism and conduct distinct impacts in MMOGs. Specifically, affordances of interaction and identity are positively related to virtual-domain perfectionism, while achievement affordance is unrelated to virtual-domain perfectionism. Immersion affordance is positively related to virtual-domain perfectionism of seeking excellence and negatively associated with virtual-domain perfectionism of avoiding failure.

This study identified virtual-domain perfectionism and specific MMOGs affordances. The research model provides insights into addictive use in MMOGs by leveraging context and combining lenses. Research findings help elucidate the role of virtual-domain perfectionism on the addictive use from MMOGs affordances with the corresponding technical features.

This research examined the social interactions of online game players based on the proposed motivation model in order to understand the transitions of motivation of online game. The authors also separated samples into four categories to compare the difference of different type of online game players.

This study proposed a motivation model for online game player based on existence–relatedness–growth theory. The authors also analyze the transitions of motivations via first-order and second-order Markov chain switching model to obtain the journey of online to offline socialization.

Teamwork–socialization players preferred to make friends in their online gaming network to socialize. Competition–socialization players were mostly students who played games to compete and socialize and may share experience in online or offline activities. Teamwork–mechanics players purely derived pleasure from gaming and were not motivated by other factors in their gaming activities. Competition–mechanics players may already have friends with other gamers in real life.

More samples can be added to generate more generalizable findings and the proposed motivation model can be extended by other motivations related to online gaming behavior. The authors proposed a motivation model for online to offline socialization and separated online game players into four categories: teamwork–socialization, competition–socialization, teamwork–mechanics and competition–mechanics. The category of teamwork–socialization may contribute to online to offline socialization area. The category of competition–mechanics may add value to the area of traditional offline socialization. The categories of competition–socialization and teamwork–mechanics may help extant literature understand critical stimulus for online gaming behavior.

The authors’ findings can help online gaming industry understand the motivation journey of players through transition. Different types of online games may have various online game player's journey that can assist companies in improving the quality of online games. Online game companies can also offer official community to players for further interaction and experience exchange or the platform for offline activities in the physical environment.

This research proposed a novel motivation model to examine online to offline socializing behavior for online game research. The motivations in model were interconnected via the support of literature. The authors also integrated motivations by Markov chain switching model to obtain the transitions of motivational status. It is also the first attempt to analyze first-order and second-order Markov chain switching model for analysis. The authors’ research examined the interconnected relationships among motivations in addition to the influential factors to online gaming behavior from previous research. The results may contribute to extend the understanding of online to offline socialization in online gaming literature.