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"video game industry"
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The strange works of Taro Yoko : from Drakengard to NieR: Automata
Throughout his entire career, Taro Yoko has always felt disheartened by the image of humanity reflected in most big-budget video games, which propose the use of firearms as the principal means of action. Through his own work, from Drakengard to NieR: Automata, this artist attempts to explore the reasons behind our strange fascination with conflict. In this book we explore the contours of his games, the behind-the-scenes of their development, the complexity of their tales and their thematic depth. Discover this multifaceted and altruistic creator, who is convinced that video gaming is a diverse and unique medium.
Book
Not All Fun and Games
Motivated by the goal of understanding the labour conditions of workers in the videogame industry and their participatory power to create decent work, Not All Fun and Games is a critical examination of a global entertainment juggernaut with revenues that top film, television, and music production combined. Jobs in the industry are heralded as the vanguard of the new economy, governments offer lucrative tax credits to lure game studios to their regions, and game developers often express commitment and passion for their work. Yet, the industry is also known for its toxic workplaces. To understand these disparities and gain insight into twenty-first-century labour conditions, Marie-Josée Legault and Johanna Weststar have carried out a comprehensive mixed-methods study of the North American industry over the past fifteen years. They combine detailed survey data from thousands of game developers with over one hundred qualitative interviews to systematically reveal labour issues such as precarity, lack of workforce diversity, unpredictable schedules, unpaid overtime, low unionization rates, worker burnout, and significant pay inequality. Updating the theoretical concept of citizenship at work, the authors connect these labour issues to a fundamental lack of voice and representation in the workplace. They determine that videogame workers and others in contemporary project-based work environments lack agency in regulating their work and lack fundamental protections. Not All Fun and Games comprehensively documents conditions in the North American industry and highlights ways to counter workers' lack of voice and representation in their workplaces to better create healthy, equitable, and inclusive workplaces.
eBook
Minecraft : the business behind the makers of Minecraft
\"How did the video game Minecraft become the most popular game in the world? Find out about the development of the global phenomenon that is Minecraft, along with the story of Mojang, the company behind it.\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
Hollywood gamers : digital convergence in the film and video game industries
For years, major film studios have licensed products related to their
most popular films; video game spin-offs have become an important part of these
licensing practices. Where blockbuster films are concerned, the video game release
has become the rule rather than the exception. In Hollywood Gamers, Robert Alan
Brookey explores the business conditions and technological developments that have
facilitated the convergence of the film and video game industries. Brookey treats
video games as rhetorical texts and critically examines several games to determine
how specific industrial conditions are manifest in game design. Among the games (and
films) discussed are Lord of the Rings, The Godfather, Spider-Man, and Iron
Man.
eBook
The evolution and social impact of video game economics
Today, consumers of video games spend over 22.4 billion each year; using more complex and multi-layered strategies, game developers attempt to extend the profitability of their products from a simple one-time sale, to continuous engagement with the consumer.
eBook
Entry into platform-based markets
This paper examines the relative importance of platform quality, indirect network effects, and consumer expectations on the success of entrants in platform-based markets. We develop a theoretical model and find that an entrant's success depends on the strength of indirect network effects and on the consumers' discount factor for future applications. We then illustrate the model's applicability by examining Xbox's entry into the video game industry. We find that Xbox had a small quality advantage over the incumbent, PlayStation 2, and the strength of indirect network effects and the consumers' discount factor, while statistically significant, fall in the region where PlayStation 2' s position is unsustainable.
Journal Article
Platform Performance Investment in the Presence of Network Externalities
Managers of emerging platforms must decide what level of platform performance to invest in at each product development cycle in markets that exhibit two-sided network externalities. High performance is a selling point for consumers, but in many cases it requires developers to make large investments to participate. Abstracting from an example drawn from the video game industry, we build a strategic model to investigate the trade-off between investing in high platform performance versus reducing investment in order to facilitate third party content development. We carry out a full analysis of three distinct settings: monopoly, price-setting duopoly, and price-taking duopoly. We provide insights on the optimum investment in platform performance and demonstrate how conventional wisdom about product development may be misleading in the presence of strong cross-network externalities. In particular, we show that, contrary to the conventional wisdom about \"winner-take-all\" markets, heavily investing in the core performance of a platform does not always yield a competitive edge. We characterize the conditions under which offering a platform with lower performance but greater availability of content can be a winning strategy.
Journal Article
Cooperative Gaming
Cooperative Gaming provides context and practical advice regarding diversity in the games industry. The book begins with a deep dive into research literature and the history of diversity in the games industry to provide context around what diversity is and why it is a topic worth considering. The book looks at the different facets of diversity and games, exploring the issues and solutions within game development, studio management, event planning, and more. It provides people with practical advice around being a marginalized person in the games industry and how to be heard, how studios can support inclusive practices, and events can actively become more accessible to a diverse audience.
eBook
Multihoming in Two-Sided Markets: An Empirical Inquiry in the Video Game Console Industry
Two-sided markets are composed of platform owners and two distinct user networks that either buy or sell applications for the platform. The authors focus on multihoming—the choice of an agent in a user network to use more than one platform. In the context of the video game console industry, they examine the conditions affecting seller-level multihoming decisions on a given platform. Furthermore, they investigate how platform-level multihoming of applications affects the sales of the platform. The authors show that increased platform-level multihoming of applications hurts platform sales, a finding consistent with literature on brand differentiation, but they also show that this effect vanishes as platforms mature or gain market share. The authors find that platform-level multihoming of applications affects platform sales more strongly than the number of applications. Furthermore, among mature platforms, an increasing market share leads to more seller-level multihoming, while among nascent platforms, seller-level multihoming decreases as platform market share increases. These findings prompt scholars to look beyond network size in analyzing two-sided markets and provide guidance to both (application) sellers and platform owners.
Journal Article