Hello! We're Realworld, the playable content platform. Realworld provides new spatial experiences by layering compelling stories onto familiar spaces. But you might wonder - do the experiences that Realworld provides really work? Well, you can put those doubts to rest now. Research results show that tourism game content utilizing Realworld has a positive impact on attachment to visited locations and intention to revisit.
So today, we'd like to introduce a recently published paper by Professor Shin Hak-seung's research team from Hanyang University's Department of Tourism, along with various cases of Realworld mentioned in academia.
Realworld's gamification content has a positive impact on visited regions?!
In April 2025, we received news that a paper titled 'Can Gamification and Augmented Reality (AR) Revitalize Declining Destinations? Investigating its Impact on Tourist Attitudes and Behavior' (lead author: Jo Yu-jeong, PhD candidate at the Future Innovation Tourism Research Lab), written by Professor Shin Hak-seung's research team from Hanyang University's Department of Tourism, was published in the prestigious journal 'Journal of Travel Research'.
The Journal of Travel Research where this paper was published is a top-tier (Q1) SSCI journal (impact factor 8.0) and the world's most authoritative academic journal in the travel and tourism field. Therefore, this publication can be seen as academic recognition that Realworld's tourism content has a positive impact on regional revitalization.
Notably, Professor Shin Hak-seung is an authority in tourism studies who has been selected for the 'World's Top 2% Researchers List' annually published by Stanford University and Elsevier, and currently serves as an editorial board member for multiple journals including Journal of Travel Research.
The content used in the research was the nighttime tourism experience content 'Beyond the Dimensional Boundary,' a collaboration between Realworld and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Korea Tourism Organization, Gangneung City, and Gangneung Tourism Development Corporation, as well as 'Legend of Doraemi,' creator content from Wonju City, Gangwon Province. Both contents were beloved by many players.
To confirm the impact of Realworld's tourism content on regional tourism and economic revitalization through attracting visitors, the research team analyzed the effects of gamification on tourists' cognition, emotion, and behavior using the three-component attitude model (cognition-emotion-behavior based attitude theory). First, through qualitative analysis, they identified place attachment, destination knowledge, and behavioral intention as key effects of tourism content, and based on this, established and quantitatively validated a research model integrating these factors.
Online and on-site surveys conducted with tourists who participated in Realworld content showed that gamification methods increased place attachment and destination knowledge, which in turn had a positive impact on intention to revisit the region. Group variance analysis showed no significant differences between the three groups across all variables (p-values 0.231~0.594), indicating that the survey method did not significantly impact the data. This means that each group's response to the Realworld content they experienced was statistically similar, suggesting that Realworld has a positive impact on regional visit activation.
Research on Realworld beyond tourism with diverse topics
Even before this research, various studies targeting Realworld have existed. The Seoul Institute's 'Current Status Diagnosis and Revitalization Plan for Seoul's Cultural Heritage Projects' introduced 'The Emperor's Secret Agent: Imperial Ikmunsa,' planned jointly by Realworld and Seoul Tourism Foundation, as directly helpful for regional revitalization.
There have also been studies approaching Realworld content from storytelling and humanistic perspectives beyond the tourism field. Papers dealing with 'Operation Wish,' the predecessor of Realworld's steady seller 'Jeongdong Secret Letter,' and creator content 'Finding the Secret of Magoksa Temple Legend' can also be found. It appears that Realworld approached as an attractive subject matter in that it used narratives in actual spaces and stories passed down in regions as source material.
Today we introduced cases of Realworld that are drawing attention even in academia. Realworld will continue to work so that the positive impact Realworld has on regions and spaces can extend to even more places. Thank you!