The number of legional festivals in South Korea in 2024 will reach 1,170, with an increase by whopping 437 compared to 2017. The reason for the rapid increase in legional festivals can be viewed to be the fact that legional governments actively promot...
The number of legional festivals in South Korea in 2024 will reach 1,170, with an increase by whopping 437 compared to 2017. The reason for the rapid increase in legional festivals can be viewed to be the fact that legional governments actively promoted them on the premise that complex functions and values, such as strengthening the legional community culture, revitalizing the legional economy, fostering the tourism industry, and promoting the region, could be highlighted through legional festivals.
However, many legional festivals currently being held in South Korea are evaluated to be boring to the participants of the festivals due to their unified appearances that have lost the uniqueness of the region, and are losing fun, which is an important element of festivals. Originally, visitors to festivals should play the role of active subjects who participate in certain festivals as they feel interest in the festivals by themselves, not as passive and alienated spectators. Therefore, the uniformity of festivals reduces the fun and immersion in the festivals so that an alternative is needed to solve this problem. This study attempted to find such an alternative from the use of gamification. In fact, no studies have attempted to apply the concept of gamification to legional festivals or to identify the components of gamification as a way to revitalize legional festivals. Therefore, this study not only proposed the concept of gamification as an alternative way to revitalize legional festivals, but also attempted to extract gamification elements suitable for legional festivals of our time and use them to analyze the current status and perception of legional festivals, as well as using them as a basis for suggesting ways to revitalize legional festivals. To that end, we tried to proceed with the study after dividing it into largely four stages, and the results are as follows.
The first stage was a process to review previous studies related to the concept of gamification and the components of gamification developed for applications by field thereby selecting core components of gamification that would be applied to this study on legional festivals.
As a result of the study, nine components could be derived by deeply analyzing previous studies with a view to selecting core components of gamification that can be applied to legional festivals. That is, by comprehensively analyzing previous studies, this study found that nine gamification elements, which are compensation element, challenge element, achievement element, competition element, relational element, access element, auditory element, visual element, and storytelling element, are used the most essentially.
The second stage was a stage to analyze whether the core components of gamification as such are all melted into the contents and play process of games such as League of Legends, Lost Ark, and Maple Story, which are representative games currently highly popular in South Korea as of 2024, and if so, how they are presented.
As a result of this study, it was found that in all the three games, nine gamification elements, which are compensation element, challenge element, achievement element, competition element, relational element, access element, auditory element, visual element, and storytelling element, are used evenly. That is, the compensation element is an element necessary to maximize the sense of accomplishment, and the challenge element is used as an element aimed at solving problems from a personal point of view. The achievement element is an element to feel satisfaction through the visible results obtained while achieving the goal, and the competition element is an element for competition with other players, and the relational element is a cooperative element or community element, and is used as a program of a social media system, a community site, etc. In addition, the visual element is used as an element that deepens immersion through the background, building, or NPC of the game, the auditory element is an element that increases immersion through OST, BGM, effect sounds, etc., and the storytelling element is being used as a way to prevent immersion from being broken by delivering a consistent story. Finally, the access element is being used as a way to enhance the understanding of the game for users who are new to the game.
The third stage was a stage to understand the current status of utilization of the concretized core components of gamification in order to review whether they could be applied to legional festivals too. Therefore, at this stage, this study attempted to understand the current status of utilization of gamification with three Jeonnam festivals: the Mokpo Port Festival, the Boseong Dahyang Festival, and the Hampyeong Butterfly Festival, which are representative festivals in the Jeonnam region.
According to the result of the analysis, the compensation element was used as a compensation in which compensation could be obtained through competition, the challenge element was used as a challenge program through an experimental program, the achievement element as a program that make people feel achievement through experience, and the competition element as a competition program through rankings, and it was understood that the competition program was also applied as a way to compare the progress situation for competition as with the Mokpo Port Festival. In addition, whereas the relational element could not act as a means to maintain immersion even after the festival ended because there was no community site unlike in the case of games, the visual element was presented consistently in line with the concept of the festival. Unlike the use of the visual element, the auditory element did not correspond to the concept of festivals, and the storytelling element was also not very utilizable due to the inconsistent use of the auditory element apart from the visual element tailored to the concept. Finally, it was confirmed that the access element was well utilized through programs such as advertisements and promotions, information desks and information brochures to attract visitors.
In the final stage, this study attempted to check the favorability of programs in which the nine elements of gamification (compensation, challenge, achievement, competition, relational, access, auditory, visual, and storytelling) with visitors to legional festivals with a view to more actively utilizing gamification as a way to revitalize legional festivals. At this stage, this study attempted to provide a basis for providing strategic alternatives to the programs and strategies with which the gamification elements derived earlier should be planned in legional festivals.
As a result of the study, it was found that although legional festivals provide fun so that the level of immersion is not broken in terms of the compensation element, the compensation through competition reduces the fun of visitors and leads to the loss of the level of immersion. In terms of the challenge element, it could be seen that visitors feel fun through the challenge element, and through this, it could be suggested that the challenge element could be further diversified to increase visitors’ immersion. With regard to the achievement element, it could be seen that people felt fun through the achievements obtained through making their own products or through missions. With regard to the competition element, it was found that although the competition element is the most important element for game users, the favorability of visitors to legional festivals was low. In addition, in terms of the relational element, it was found that visitors' preference for the cooperative program to build bonds with their family members was the highest, and more visitors preferred to share information or reviews about the festivals with acquaintances. The visual element was identified to be perceived as a core factor that determines the favorability of visitors for legional festivals, and it was confirmed that the preference of visitors was the composition of a festival space that fits the concept of the festival. In terms of the auditory element, although this study found that visitors' favorability for festivals was high when music suitable for the concept of the festival concept was provided, but it was also found that the current legional festivals are reducing immersion with the inconsistent use of trot, etc. In terms of the storytelling element, it could be seen that the favorability for the festival was high when space composition or programs were organized through the consistency of stories that fir the concept. With regard to the last one, the access element, it could be seen that favorability for information on SNS for information on SNS was higher than that for information on websites or YouTube.
This study anticipated that by analyzing the most popular games in South Korea through the four stages of study as such, a gamification strategy could be proposed as a way to revitalize South Korea's legional festivals, which are considered to lack entertaining and entertainment functions, which are one of the traditional functions of legional festivals, a lot, so that they can be established as characteristic and interesting festivals.