Moonlight Blade

The Impact of Playing Experience of History-Fiction-Mixing Games on Players' Historical Knowledge

This study examines whether playing history-fiction-mixing games, using the Chinese MMORPG Moonlight Blade as a case, influences players' knowledge of real history.

• The study of 686 valid responses (488 players, 198 non-players) found players scored slightly below non-players overall on a 33-blank quiz, but the gap was not statistically significant, and gender had no meaningful influence.
• The effect of playing varied sharply by age: younger players outperformed non-players, while players aged 24 to 28 showed a significant deficit, and older players also tended to score lower.
• On people-related questions, players trailed non-players significantly by about 5 percentage points, the weakest category overall for accuracy.