The effect of digital transformation on social culture: Gamers Metaverse awareness

Today, with the digital transformation gradually exceeding its limits, the effects of this transformation on social culture have become even more evident. People created their accounts on digital platforms and moved their activities to these platforms. With this rapid digital transformation, important developments are taking place in the world with the realization of Metaverse, which was first mentioned in Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash. Development and transformation are taking place in education, entertainment, communication, commercial activities and many other areas. With the effective use of Metaverse in every field, opportunities and threats have emerged and the question of how these threats will affect the culture of the society has emerged. This research has been prepared to provide information about digitalisation and digital transformation and to determine the impact of digital transformation on social culture in line with the virtual/fictional universe awareness of online gamers. The conceptual parts of the research were formed by literature review method. In the application part of the research, one-on-one interviews were conducted with 10 gamers using the interview method from qualitative research methods. The participants were asked questions about the virtual/fictional universe and technological developments and their answers were subjected to thematic analysis. As a result of the research, it was understood that the awareness of the virtual/fictional universe has a history at a level to be adopted by gamers, has an impact on digital culture and even has a high impact potential, and is an important platform for the future.