Role
Senior Researcher

Service
UX strategy and Ethnographic research

Description
What type of connections do we make when we play games in public Internet cafes? How does monthly subscription differ from a pay-as-you-go payment model affect game play? How does culture and history affect the way we think about games and the virtual self? What does trust mean in China? We try to answer these questions and more as we studied Chinese gamers at Internet cafes in China.

I worked with a professor and graduate students at University of California Irvine to interview and document Chinese World of Warcraft players. We traveled to Internet Cafes in Beijing and Shanghai to collect artifacts, witness, interview, and understand players in this unique environment. We interviewed over 30 players varied in age and professions. These players engage in rich online game interaction which often carries over to offline friendships. We studied these relationship and how they affect game play and collaborative learning in virtual environment.

• Identify player habits
• Understand how trust fosters collaborations in game play
• Understand how subtle nuances in payment system can affect player behavior