0000000000636820
AUTHOR
Hannah Schmid
A magically nice guy: Parasocial relationships with Harry Potter across different cultures
This study explored parasocial relationships (PSRs) with Harry Potter that readers from different cultures have developed. An overall sample of 2551 Potter fans from Germany (individualistic culture) and Mexico (collectivistic culture) completed an online questionnaire assessing their parasocial relationship with the character. Fans from the collectivistic culture rated Potter’s sociability higher than fans from the individualistic culture. For fans from both cultures, social attraction turned out as most important determinant of PSRs with Potter, while homophily ranked lowest. Overall, PSRs and fandom turned out to be quite similar across cultures, with some differences in character perce…
Exploring the Enjoyment of Playing Browser Games
Browser games--mostly persistent game worlds that can be used without client software and monetary cost with a Web browser--belong to the understudied digital game types, although they attract large player communities and motivate sustained play. The present work reports findings from an online survey of 8,203 players of a German strategy browser game ("Travian"). Results suggest that multiplayer browser games are enjoyed primarily because of the social relationships involved in game play and the specific time and flexibility characteristics ("easy-in, easy-out"). Competition, in contrast, seems to be less important for browser gamers than for users of other game types. Findings are discuss…