Trends in Game Research in Japan: A Quantitative Analysis with Bibliographic Data

Abstract

Although the game research scene is becoming more and more active in Japan, it is often argued that domestic research trends are actually progressing in a particular direction compared to overseas trends. The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of the game research scene in Japan using a bibliometric approach and to clarify the changes in game research in Japan over time. We collected bibliographic data on 6,583 games from online bibliographic services such as CiNii, J-Stage, and NDL Search, and created a dataset. It became clear through data visualization and text mining that the composition of the community and the main topics have shifted from media for children, law, economics, and business administration to technology and social application.