Virtual Goods Purchase, Game Satisfaction and Perceived Justice: An Empirical Study of Players of PVP Mobile Games

Over recent years, the freemium business model has been a major revenue source for mobile games, namely to attract virtual consumption of players through differentiated game experience. This trend may pose challenges to the idea of “fair play,” an essential precondition for players to enjoy the game, player-versus-player (PVP) mobile game in particular. To keep track of players’ behavioral reactions to the freemium business model and their assessment of in-game experiences, we conducted a survey to disclose the relationship among the virtual goods purchase, game satisfaction, and perceived justice of PVP mobile game players (N=262). The results indicate that (1.) the game satisfaction mediates the effect of virtual goods purchase on perceived justice, and (2.) the utilitarian satisfaction demonstrates a greater significant indirect effect upon perceived justice than hedonic satisfaction. This study also discusses the implications of the above findings in terms of commerce, psychology, and culture.

Virtual Consumption, Sustainability and Human Well-Being

There is widespread consensus that present patterns of consumption could lead to the permanent impossibility of maintaining those patterns and, perhaps, the existence of the human race. While many patterns of consumption qualify as 'sustainable' there is one in particular that deserves greater attention: virtual consumption. We argue that virtual consumption - the experience of authentic consumptive experiences replicated by alternative means - has the potential to reduce the deleterious consequences of real consumption by redirecting some consumptive behaviour from shifting material states to shifting information states.

A Heteronomous Consumer Romance

In the spirit of dystopian science fiction, this story imagines marketing in a near future. A reader might recognise that there is a relationship between aesthetic forms (stories) and the dramas that play out in society and so although this is fiction, it is also about the critical concerns that are emerging in the use of corporate technologies. The story draws from theory that suggests our most intimate relationships are embedded in and create market structures, and on theory that accounts for how technology (and especially AI) has significant impact on market practices. Core ideas also reference my previous and ongoing research on the imagination, on marketplace relationships and on digital virtual consumption, and from previous accounts of AI and market/political systems in speculative fictions. I invite the reader to reflect on the sorts of dominating human–technology–market relationships that may be with us soon, and on the risk of perverse instantiations in commercial AI deployment. Overall the tone is critical, but themes are also presented as ambiguous, recognising the seductive quality of marketing technologies.

Feasting Our Eyes

Big Night (1996), Ratatouille (2007), and Julie and Julia (2009) are more than films about food—they serve a political purpose. In the kitchen, around the table, and in the dining room, these films use cooking and eating to explore such themes as ideological pluralism, ethnic and racial acceptance, gender equality, and class flexibility—but not as progressively as you might think. Feasting Our Eyes takes a second look at these and other modern American food films to emphasize their conventional approaches to nation, gender, race, sexuality, and social status. Devoured visually and emotionally, these films are particularly effective defenders of the status quo. Feasting Our Eyes looks at Hollywood films and independent cinema, documentaries and docufictions, from the 1990s to today and frankly assesses their commitment to racial diversity, tolerance, and liberal political ideas. Laura Lindenfeld and Fabio Parasecoli find women and people of color continue to be treated as objects of consumption even in these modern works and, despite their progressive veneer, American food films often mask a conservative politics that makes commercial success more likely. A major force in mainstream entertainment, American food films shape our sense of who belongs, who has a voice, and who has opportunities in American society. They facilitate the virtual consumption of traditional notions of identity and citizenship, reworking and reinforcing ingrained ideas of power.

‘I Create Therefore I Virtually Exist’: Digital Content Creation, Virtual Consumption, and Motivation in Second Life

User-generated content (UGC) has been receiving increasing attention given its spread throughout digital media platforms and applications. Previous research focusing on Web 2.0 based platforms highlighted linkages with personal characteristics, user attitudes, and social as well as individual motivators. Interestingly, UGC has not been addressed on other platforms such as 3D virtual worlds, and the purpose of the current study is to fill this gap in the literature. More specifically, we explore virtual content creation within the particular 3D virtual world of Second Life, via comparing key demographic, usage and motivational attributes of creator versus non-creator residents. Results revealed differential patterns as a function of age, gender and usage. Digital content creators were also more likely to purchase goods reflecting stability, expand greater financial resources on the Second Life Marketplace, and while acknowledging greater difficulty in ease of use, reported higher esteem and self-actualization. Implications for scholars and practitioners are discussed.