Traditional studies on cultural industries have emphasized localized innovation rooted in cultural products’ countries of origin. While this research acknowledges the significance of production origin, the digital transformation of cultural industries has shifted the landscape of cultural product innovation from traditional localized processes to a more globalized and democratic approach by engaging users worldwide. However, there is a notable gap in understanding demand-side variations in users from different countries, particularly as digitalization allows global users’ languages to convey diverse linguistic inputs. To address this gap, we investigate how users’ future-time reference (FTR) across countries influences the pace of cultural product innovation in the mobile gaming industry. Analyzing a global sample of 7787 mobile games, we find that in countries where gamers predominantly use weak FTR languages, their communication exhibits proximate temporal framing, prompting the introduction of new gaming content at a faster pace. Further, the effectiveness of such FTR framing becomes more pronounced when publishers pay close attention to or are familiar with gamers’ languages. These findings contribute important insights for research on country of origin and cultural industries and for managers to better engage users to drive cultural product innovation.

关于文化产业的传统研究强调植根于文化产品原产国的本地化创新。虽然这项研究承认生产来源的重要性，但文化产业的数字化转型通过吸引全球用户，将文化产品创新的格局从传统的本地化流程转变为更加全球化和民主的方法。然而，在理解来自不同国家/地区的用户的需求方差异方面存在显著差距，特别是因为数字化允许全球用户的语言传达不同的语言输入。为了解决这一差距，我们调查了不同国家/地区用户的未来时间参考 （FTR） 如何影响移动游戏行业文化产品创新的步伐。通过分析 7787 款手机游戏的全球样本，我们发现，在游戏玩家主要使用弱 FTR 语言的国家/地区，他们的交流表现出近似的时间框架，促使以更快的速度引入新的游戏内容。此外，当出版商密切关注或熟悉游戏玩家的语言时，这种 FTR 框架的有效性会变得更加明显。这些发现为对原籍国和文化产业的研究以及管理者更好地吸引用户推动文化产品创新提供了重要见解。