Video Games as a Media for Tourism Experience

Abstract

Virtual reality technology in recent year has been a hot topic in tourism and hospitality field, both for research and practical purposes. Virtual technology has some limitation, such as costs and time, which can be addressed by a different form of virtual technology, which is video games. The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of mental imagery, sense of presence and addition of storytelling towards tourism experience by using video games as a medium. Previous studies have analyzed effects of mental imagery and presence towards the tourism experience, but there is lack of research in using storytelling or narratives to add to the tourism experience. Storytelling has been studied in marketing field, and has been found to be a great marketing tool, because people love to hear stories. Video games can be a better tool for delivering storytelling, while providing solid mental imagery and a sense of presence to the location. The methodology proposed for this study is a quantitative approach, using survey questionnaire as a tool. Two sampling method is proposed. The first is to use players of location-based games as the population, and randomly take the sample. The second method is to uses tourists or potential tourists of a destination, have the respondents try out the game, and answer the questionnaire. The proposed research could provide the importance of storytelling to be added for virtual reality and video games usage in tourism and hospitality field.