Exploring User Experience of "Animal Crossing" via Semantic Network Approach

Abstract

Our research aims to explore user experience of "Animal Crossing" which is one of the most popular games as of 2021. To this end, we collected 363,931 comments from sub-reddit of "Animal Crossing". Then, we apply Gephi for performing sematic network analysis of gathered data. Following the results of semantic network analysis, we find that girl, boy, man, and guy when describing the animal characters in the game. Based on CASA (computers are social actors) paradigm, this can lead to the conclusion that the users tend to apply the social rules and norms (e.g., gender stereotypes) to the animal characters in the game. This finding is likely to contribute to extend the literature of CASA theory.