온라인 게임의 혁신 전략 연구 - 탐험과 활용을 중심으로 -

The current study quatitatively examines the value creation effect of patch service updates by on-line game companies. Taking the theoretical perspective of exploration and exploitation (March, 1991), game patch updates are categorized into two classes: new contents creation, reflecting exploration activities and contents modification, reflecting exploitation activities. The value added by updates are measured by the changes in the user-time spent on a particular game product, a methodology similar to event studies in finance. The findings are, first that new contents creation updates create value; on the other hand contents modification updates do not, showing a partial support for the hypothesis that both explorative and exploitative innovations would create values on the average. Second, value creation was higher in high performance group (having more than 5% of market share) than in low performance group (less than 5%), thus rendering support for the resource-based argument that the organizational routines and knowledge basis that proved to be successful are expansionable without losing quality to forthcoming innovations. Third, the competitive scope or customer loyalty argument that new contents creation and contents modification woud create a higher value when the product serves a niche market (or a loyal customer group) rather than a broader target market (or a less loyal customer group) found some supports in on-line game updates. Value creation by updates were significantly higher for 'adults users only' games than 'all users' games.