Abstract
As a new branch of e-business, the online gaming industry has attracted much attention from the online operating organisations. Some of them intend to share a piece of this “cake”. Therefore, by drawing demographical profile of the Chinese online game (2D or 3D virtual community) users through quantitative approaches, such as distributing the questionnaire online would help the forthcoming companies to understand the current situation of the online game market. In addition, through interviews with game users, the research would discover some popular marketing strategies as the favourable selection of the forthcoming companies. Furthermore, the research would reveal the facing challenges in the Chinese online gaming industry as a precaution for the forthcoming online game hosting companies. The studies were developed from enterprises’ point of view by interviewing the experts in this industry, to understand common issues faced by virtual gaming hosting companies, including the challenges of the online games infrastructure and the game operation. Finally, based on the findings and analysis of the research, the social and business impact should attract attention of the online gaming hosting companies. Knowing the impact of online games on business would help companies finding many new approaches (i.e. virtual game as new media for advertising, virtual economy management) to gain profits from virtual games. Understanding the social impacts (i.e. physical and psychological effects on the users, social ethical standards affected by virtual game) of the games would further shape the games into healthier development and render the games more acceptable by the public.
