This article presents an ethnographic analysis of case studies derived from fieldwork that was designed to consider the different ways Korean game players establish community online and offline. I consider ways Korean youth participate in activities at Korean computer game rooms, which can be thought of as "third places." A synthesis of the Korean concept Wang-tta provides extra insight into the motivations to excel at digital games and one of the strong drivers of such community membership. Korea's gaming society has many unique elements within the interplay of culture, social structure, and infrastructure.In his work, No sense of place: The impact of electronic media on social behavior, Joshua Meyrowitz (1985) asserted that because of electronic media, physical location no longer matters in shaping our experiences and behaviors; nor does the physical presence of people "with" us. Although Meyrowitz concentrated primarily on television to support his analysis of electronic media, it is important to consider his work as a voice of concern over the impact of electronic media on society. Since the time of its publication, such media-centric concerns over the welfare of society have diverted much analysis to a debatably more "dangerous" and "addictive" genre of electronic media: the online videogame. My argument is that such media-centric analyses largely obscure the bigger picture of how a society responds to electronic media. Cultural artifacts such as television or videogames have different ascribed meanings depending on the cultural context. In this article, I use my case study of Korean online game communities to show how consideration of the physical location of a technology does indeed matter, and how media use differs from one culture to another.

This is a peer-reviewed article in Digital Studies/Le champ numérique, a journal published by the Open Library of Humanities.

This article analyzes how mobile gaming has taken shape within the context of Korea's particular online gaming culture. It explores some of the sociocultural factors contributing to the growth of mobile gaming on smartphone platforms in Korea. It discusses how the emergence of smartphone usage has further shaped the development of Korea's mobile games, compared with what one might find in other use cultures and national contexts. It explores the manner in which the transfer to, from, and between online gaming culture and mobile gaming culture is occurring in a specific subset of Korean youth in a highly networked, urban setting.

This study evaluated five early cases in which esport developer Riot Games made rulings regarding activities and infractions by members of various institutions related to its product, League of Legends. The findings of this study support future theoretical exploration of other esports in seeking a fuller understanding of issues related to consent, power differentials, and roles and behaviors expected of the institutional activities of players and teams in competition. Increased investigation of these—and other—issues from an ethical standpoint could lead to a framework that not only would facilitate future study but also bring opportunities for improvements in practices in concert with necessary policy changes.

This article is a theoretical and empirical exploration of the meaning that accompanies contractual agreements, such as the End-User License Agreements (EULAs) that participants of online communities are required to sign as a condition of participation. As our study indicates, clicking “I agree” on the often lengthy conditions presented during the installation and updating process typically permits third parties (including researchers) to monitor the digitally-mediated actions of users. Through our small-scale study in which we asked participants which terms of EULAs they would find agreeable, the majority confirmed that they simply clicked through the terms presented to them without much knowledge about the terms to which they were agreeing. From a research ethics standpoint, we reflect upon whether or not informed consent is achieved in these cases and pose a challenge to the academic research community to attend to the socio-technical shift from informed consent to a more nebulous concept of contractual agreement, online and offline.