Impacts of media richness on network features and community commitment in online games

Purpose: Online gamers form communities and offer game makers various revenue sources. Gamers' continual revenue contributions should depend on their commitment to gaming communities (CGC), where they rely heavily on communication media that carry rich information or provide enhanced media richness. However, no study has yet examined how to use the four elements of media richness to fuel gamers' CGC, revealing a research gap. Seeking to fill this gap, this study constructs a research framework and formulates hypotheses based on media richness theory (MRT). Design/methodology/approach: This study obtained responses from 1,971 online gamers and applied structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses. Findings: This study finds that the four media richness elements have selective impacts on network convergence and interdependence that result in CGC. Moreover, compared with interdependence, network convergence has a stronger impact on CGC. Originality/value: The findings offer online game makers insights that will enable them to design the communication functions in games to support the formation of strongly connected gamer communities. Moreover, the findings advance MRT by showing its ability to explain the formation of online gaming communities.