The Impact of Game Avatar Customization in Improving User Experience and Gamer Loyalty: Experiment in Role Playing Game (RPG) Based Video Game

Abstract

The increasing number of video game titles raises competition between video game developers getting tighter and more competitive, this encourages the game developers to be more creative in designing their games so that players become loyal to play and not quickly switch to playing other games. While we know that game development is very difficult, time consuming and requires a lot of costs for the RPG genre. So that the loyalty of game players in playing games becomes a crucial problem.This study aims to explain how the customization of game avatars can increase the loyalty of video game players in playing role-playing games (RPGs).This study uses the within-subject experimental method with participants who are RPG video game players who have played for at least 1 year, 24 participants participated in the 8 experiment session throughout the study. The results of this study indicate that avatar customization is very important because it can improve the player's self-identification in the game, improve the playing experience, improve the perceived quality of the video game played, increase the flow and immersion of players, and increase gamer loyalty. Another result that was raised was that the use of avatars that were the same gender with players (male players using male avatars) did not have higher flow and immersion than when using different genders (male players use female avatars) so that this raises new issues of gander swapping in the role playing video game that can be continued for further research.

Are video games the best way to stay-at-home?

“…This does not help players to stay playing for a long time (flow in the game). Kristanto (2018) states that the type of game that emphasizes repetitive factors will tend to be boring and players are unable to achieve long flow conditions. Understanding the flow conditions in playing this game also provides additional knowledge that in a pandemic condition that encourages someone to stay at home, it is related to the type of game that psychologically supports players to stay at home.…”

“…Even players are not required to always think about completing quests but can relax in it by enjoying the digital natural scenery, natural sounds, and background music. Open world games are a new form of e-leisure (Kristanto, 2018).…”

“…In essence, video games sell the experience of playing which is presented in a particular gameplay concept (Kristanto, 2018). When entering the pandemic season of COVID-19, surprisingly the video game industry experienced an increase in demand when mainstream entertainment industries such as tourism, cinemas, and restaurants experienced a setback.…”

“…Flow can be defined as a psychological condition that experienced by a person when doing certain activities, in which the activity actor feels like being fully involved, united with his activity, attention is focused on the operationalization of the activity (Hsu and Lu, 2004) so that he loses awareness of spatial conditions around them (Cho and Kim, 2012) and feel complete control over the environment of their activities (Hoffman and Novak, 2009). This condition makes it very possible for video game players to be immersed in playing activities so that players tend to be open to the stimuli provided in the game (Kristanto, 2018). Based on this theory, video game players who are immersed in the game should be more receptive to social arguments such as campaigns to adhere to health protocols and to stay at home during a pandemic.…”

“…For example, maybe a film is a good entertainment form in a selfisolation scenario, but one film title can only be enjoyed for 3 hours, even though someone watches various movie titles, but watching activities that make someone only sitting still and watching, will only cause new boredom, saturation to do watching activities. Video games have different elements, players are required to have high involvement in the game and often this refers to a feeling of excitement that makes players lose track of time, and ends up playing video games with a very long duration (Kristanto, 2018).…”