Research On The Identification Of Chinese Traditional Culture Among Chinese-national Style Game Players,Illustrated By The Case Of Honor Of Kings

Under the background of the deepening global cultural identity crisis,the traditional Chinese cultural identity model has been disrupted,and the "digitization of traditional culture" is expected to rebuild the traditional Chinese cultural identity.For example,in recent years,the emergence of Chinese-national style games,featuring a large number of traditional Chinese cultural elements,has received a warm response from numerous young players,the most prominent representative of which is "Honor of Kings".This study intends to regard Chinese-national style games as a new field for constructing Chinese traditional cultural identity,and to examine to what extent game behaviors influence players’ Chinese traditional cultural identity based on their individual game motivations.The specific operation is to adopt a combined quantitative-qualitative research path,based on cultivation theory and use and gratification theory,with questionnaires and in-depth interviews as the core methods,to take players’ game motivation as the independent variable,game behavior as the mediating variable,and Chinese traditional cultural identity as the dependent variable,to build a structural equation model,and to analyze the data using SPSS and AMOS.The 384 valid samples showed that the national game Honor of Kings did influence players’ traditional Chinese cultural identity,which was particularly significant in terms of cultural affection,but showed an overall low cognition,high affection,and low behavioral intention.In the relationship between motivation and traditional cultural identity,social gratification has the strongest predictive power for cultural affection.All four game motivations positively and significantly influence game behavior.As game behavior increased,players’ cultural cognition and affection increased subsequently,but not significantly in behavioral intention.Through the mediation of game behavior,all four game motivations significantly predicted cultural cognition and cultural affection;however,regardless of the motivation,game behavior could not mediate between game motivation and traditional cultural behavioral intention,in other words,game was not effective in shaping higher-level traditional cultural identity.Therefore,although the game has achieved some beneficial effect in shaping cultural affection,it is not yet satisfying in terms of cultural cognition and behavioral intention.Players stay in high cultural affection,which lacks both enough cultural cognition as the foundation and fails to be well transformed into higher-level cultural behavioral intention.In addition,the effect of Chinese traditional cultural identity achieved by Chinese-national style games on players is a combination of the players’ motivation and the game product.The article concludes by shifting from the user perspective to the production side,combining data from in-depth interviews with 10 players and the researcher’s own participant observations to examine the reasons for the aforementioned recognition effect in a comprehensive manner.The reasons for the better effect of cultural affection: "Honor of Kings",which features social operation,unites players to practice virtual ritual practices and build collective memory through teaming in games;the game narrative reiterates the situation that China has rich traditional cultural resources,which enhances players’ cultural confidence and pride,and the highly immersive game experience allows players to contact gorgeous traditional Chinese cultural symbols while having fun.The reasons for the unsatisfactory cultural cognition and behavioral intention: the fast-paced real-time battle mode makes players tend to focus on the result of winning and losing rather than cultural knowledge;the influence on the cultural cognition layer for players mostly stays on the reproduction of basic knowledge and does not provide new information;the traditional culture dominated by commodity logic will lead to fragmented cultural identity or even the phenomenon of "throwing away after playing";the identity myths caused by the patchwork intersection of Eastern and Western,traditional and modern cultures have impacted the effect of games on shaping cultural identity.This study argues that the Chinese traditional cultural identity shaped by the national style game "Honor of Kings" is the epitome of a modern identity with obvious qualities of network technology logic.In the virtual space of the game,the virtualization of players’ identities,the dispersed interactions brought about by the flow of space and time,the connotation of cultural values concealed by the logic of consumption,and the multiple references brought about by the collage of cultural symbols ultimately point to a discrete modern identity.Therefore,although the cultural affection it constructs is significant,it is more of a superficial and transient emotional resonance,not a solid identity that can be transformed into behavioral intention.Therefore,game companies need to make adjustments in the future,both inside and outside the game,according to the urgent need for the construction of cultural identity and the psychological and cognitive characteristics of players.This study enriches the examination of audience motivation on connotation effect in cultivation model with the use and gratification theory and obtains empirical data in game medium and its players;in practical application,it inspires game enterprises to focus on the actual effect of players’ cultural identity in addition to the efforts on traditional cultural aesthetics and symbolic system,and try to contribute to the effective dissemination of traditional culture in new medium as well as young audiences.