Games and Culture: Using Online-gaming Data to Cluster Chinese Regional Cultures

To identify cluster of societies and cultures is not easy in subject to the availability of data. In this study, we propose a novel method to cluster Chinese regional cultures. Using geotagged online-gaming data of Chinese internet users playing online card and board games with regional features, 336 Chinese cities are grouped into 17 clusters. The distribution of clustering units shows great geographical proximity when the boundary of the clusters coincides well with the geographical boundary of provinces.