The relationship between online games & cultivation theory for Egyptian youth

The idea of engagement recently became an important factor for cultivation which focuses on making individuals more engaged and addicted to building the story rather than being just passive audiences for any content presented to them, that’s why the engagement in narratives happens, where every dealing with unrealistic elements, unbeliveable one inside the story of the game, may lead to stopping the engagmenet, resulting for lessing the effects of cultivation theory.[1]
This study aims to analyze the content of the american online game “call of duty – black ops 3” about the issue of “alnahda dam” and their views about the future of Egypt in 2065 and its relationship with the knowledge and perception of the Egyptian youth playing this game toward the reality and future of Egypt, and comparing between the perceptions’ of heavy and light viewers, investigating the relation between engagment with the design, narratives and cultivation, also meauring the impact of demographic elements on the perceptions’ of players toward the reality around them. The study is a descriptive study which collected the data by using qualitative focus group discussions by applying it on five groups as a purposive sample from the players of call of duty – black ops 3, 10 females and 40 males, aged between 19 to 26, and qualitative content analysis to analyze the content of the game, relying on gamification model. The study concluded that the more enagagement happened inside the design of the game, the less perceptions’ that the content of the game is real, especially that ethiopia don’t have a military force, Also the more engagement happened inside the narration, the more perceptions’ that the content representing the reality because of their beliefs about americans introducing narratives happened in the future.
 
 
[1] Busselle, Ryabovolova, & Wilson B: “Ruining a good story: Cultivation, perceived realism and narrative. Communications”, The European Journal of Communication Research, 2004, vol. 29, pp. 365–378.