台灣線上遊戲的在地情境與全球化文化流動

Abstract

線上遊戲作為文化工業產品，身處於文化意義、社會連結、政治與經濟變遷所共同編織起的網絡之中；在高資本與技術的門檻之下，線上遊戲也成為跨國媒體市場流動的代表。台灣身處於亞洲線上遊戲鍊結之重要一環，銜接起來自他國遊戲的在地化落實與本地遊戲文化的跨國傳遞。據此，本文透過檔案資料分析與深度訪談，描繪台灣線上遊戲產業興起的在地社會脈絡，透過其產業的全球化鍊結關係，瞭解媒體文化在全球化與在地化過程的拉扯以及醞釀於其中的不對等權力關係。研究結果有二。第一，本文將線上遊戲產業在台灣的發展分為醞釀期、起飛期與成熟期等三個階段，在醞釀期間，科技的物質結構發展扮演重要角色，起飛期與成熟期的政府政策與社會條件則影響較深。第二，在全球化文化流動上，本文歸納出語言、使用者特性與文化活動等三種在地化策略，並且提出在不對等的權力關係流動之下，存在著在地規範與文化鄰近性等兩種文化流動門檻。

Online games are interlaced with cultural meaning, social connection, politics, and economic change. Based on a secondary data analysis of government documents, content analyses of game Web sites, and interviews with gaming companies, we describe the technological, political, and social forces that formulate the online gaming industry in Taiwan and construct a novel model to understand how the global culture of online gaming interacts with local contexts.As a global-culture industry, online gaming merges the borders of dominant and subordinate nations. Most Taiwanese game companies simultaneously localize foreign games and export self-producing games. Although game companies export online games, they focus on language localization, gamer-behavior pattern localization, and cultural customs localization. The flows of globalization are limited by 2 obstacles: local regulations and cultural proximity.