Dragon Slayer Becomes the Dragon: How Players Perceive and Respond to Inequality in the Game World of Whiteout Survival

This study investigates how players perceive and respond to structural inequality within the persistent social environment of the mobile strategy game Whiteout Survival. Unlike episodic competitive games, this title features long-term alliance-based hierarchies and significant pay-to-win mechanics. The researchers conducted semi-structured interviews and think-aloud gameplay walkthroughs with 11 players to understand how resource distribution, ranking systems, and social dynamics shape player attitudes toward fairness and their subsequent behavioral adaptations.

The analysis reveals that perceptions of inequality are not fixed but evolve as players move through the game's social hierarchy. Initially, players in lower-status positions often critique the game's pay-to-win structures as unfair. However, as these players invest more time, accumulate resources, or integrate into powerful alliances, they often adopt a defensive stance toward the very systems they previously opposed. This "dragon slayer becomes the dragon" phenomenon demonstrates that evaluations of fairness are deeply tied to one's current stake in the system. Furthermore, the study finds that the legitimacy of inequality is often judged by its legibility—players are more likely to accept disparities if the mechanisms behind them are transparent, even if the outcomes remain unequal.

As online games increasingly function as complex social spaces, understanding how they reproduce real-world hierarchical dynamics is critical. This research highlights that social capital acts as an adaptive infrastructure, allowing players to navigate and survive extreme inequality. By showing how monetization and community reproduction work in tandem to sustain unequal systems, the study provides insights into the psychological and social mechanisms that keep players engaged in environments that are structurally biased against them.