Research on the Transformation Mechanism and Influencing Factors of Open-World Game Design to Players’ Free Labor--Based on the analysis of Digital Labor and Player Labor Theory

School of Journalism and Mass Communications, Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, 199004, Russia

^* Corresponding author: machaoran25@gmail.com

Abstract

With the tide of open-world games sweeping the world, the impact of the game’s unique game mechanism on the player’s behavior has been widely discussed. However, the current research mostly focuses on the traditional mechanism design and mass culture communication, and the path between the game design mechanism and the player’s time behavior lacks systematic combination and empirical testing. Taking the open-world game as the background and the game players as the research object, this paper analyzes the influence path of the four factors of game freedom, task system complexity, achievement system incentive, and social interaction intensity on the players’ game investment time, and adds emotional investment as the intermediary variable. Through a questionnaire survey and regression analysis, it is found that the four factors of game freedom, task system complexity, achievement system incentive, and social interaction intensity have a positive and significant impact on players’ game investment time, and emotional investment plays a partial mediating role. Based on this, this paper suggests that optimizing the game design mechanism should be taken as the primary goal, through improving the game mechanism to promote the personalized play of players, improve the sense of immersion, stimulate the continuous participation of players.