Creating Another Me and Experiencing the Impossible: Demystifying Fantasy to Motivate Gameplay Behaviors

<div data-language="eng" data-ev-field="abstract">Online games are popular information systems. During gameplay, players can enjoy fantasy, a contextual feature that conventional information systems cannot offer. Fantasy is known as a motivation for gameplay. However, little is known about how to formulate player-perceived fantasy and how fantasy increases game use, indicating a research gap. To plug the gap, we innovatively decompose fantasy into two novel context-specific components, i.e., create another me and experience the impossible. We use stimulus-organism-response (SOR) theory to build the model and collect data from multiple sources to test the model. The results indicate that create another me and experience the impossible enhance game autonomy and game escapism, respectively, and have varied impacts on different dimensions of game use, spanning game continuance, gameplay hours, and gameplay times. Theoretically, the results advance SOR theory by offering two novel sources of game autonomy and escapism, and clarifying the varied impacts of game escapism on different dimensions of game use. Practically, the results offer game makers insights on choosing the best component of fantasy according to their desirable dimensions of game use.<br/></div> &copy; 2023, The Authors. All rights reserved.