The Industry and Policy Context for Digital Games for Empowerment and Inclusion:Market Analysis, Future Prospects and Key Challenges in Videogames, Serious Games and Gamification

The effective use of digital games for empowerment and social inclusion (DGEI) of people and communities at risk of exclusion will be shaped by, and may influence the development of a range of sectors that supply products, services, technology and research. The principal industries that would appear to be implicated are the 'videogames' industry, and an emerging 'serious games' industry. The videogames industry is an ecosystem of developers, publishers and other service providers drawn from the interactive media, software and broader ICT industry that services the mainstream leisure market in games, The 'serious games' industry is a rather fragmented and growing network of firms, users, research and policy makers from a variety of sectors. This emerging industry is are trying to develop knowledge, products, services and a market for the use of digital games, and products inspired by digital games, for a range of non-leisure applications. This report provides a summary of the state of play of these industries, their trajectories and the challenges they face. It also analyses the contribution they could make to exploiting digital games for empowerment and social inclusion. Finally, it explores existing policy towards activities in these industries and markets, and draws conclusions as to the future policy relevance of engaging with them to support innovation and uptake of effective digital game-based approaches to empowerment and social inclusion.JRC.J.3-Information Societ

Global board games project:a cross-border entrepreneurship experiential learning initiative

Entrepreneurship training and development in the context of higher education has grown tremendously over the past four decades. What began as offerings of a handful of courses aimed primarily at business planning and small business management has evolved into over 3.000 higher education institutions around the world offering degree programs and concentrations in entrepreneurship on both undergraduate and graduate levels (Morris, Kuratko and Cornwall, 2013). Universities – particularly in the USA, UK and EU – have invested into developing entrepreneurship curricula but also extra-curricular programs and infrastructure aimed at supporting enterprise development. It is consensus among educators that entrepreneurship can be taught (Kuratko, 2005). Indeed, entrepreneurship education research has become a field in its own right (Fayolle, Gailly and Lassas‐Clerc, 2006; Pittaway and Cope, 2007; Penaluna, Penaluna and Jones, 2012; Fayolle, 2013; Fayolle and Gailly, 2015; Pittaway et al., 2015; Nabi et al., 2017). As literature indicates, entrepreneurship education can have an important impact on a variety of outcomes, including entrepreneurial intentions and behaviours. Intentions are a motivation to engage in certain behaviour that is geared towards venture creation (Gibb, 2008, 2011) as well as recognition and exploitation of opportunities (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000). Moreover, research has also identified the impact of entrepreneurship education on more subjective indicators such as attitudes (Boukamcha, 2015), perceived feasibility (Rauch and Hulsink, 2015), and skills and knowledge (Greene and Saridakis, 2008). Recently, the literature on the best practices in entrepreneurship education has centred on the importance of experiential learning allowing students to create knowledge from their interactions with the environment (Kolb, 1984). The key to effective experiential learning is engaging students individually and socially in a situation that enables them to interact with elements of the entrepreneurial context thus moving them away from text-driven to action-driven learning mode (Morris, Kuratko and Cornwall, 2013). Increasingly, digital technologies have been leveraged to create a learning environment that provides opportunities for experiential learning (Onyema and Daniil, 2017). This chapter provides findings of a study related to the development and implementation of a collaborative, digitally supported simulation project aimed at enhancing entrepreneurial social skills in an international context

Entanglements of creative agency and digital technology : a sociomaterial study of computer game development

Digital technology, with its distinctive characteristics that result from the fundamental process of digitalization that underpins it, is seen as fundamentally altering processes of creativity. However, we currently have limited understanding of creativity in relation to the development of digital technology. Computer game development, with its combination of esthetic, affective and cultural use features and highly sophisticated digital technologies, is a valuable setting for investigating these issues. In this paper, we explore how computer games are shaped through the interplay between the creative intentions of developers and the digital technologies involved in their production and playing. Drawing on in-depth studies conducted at three leading computer game development studios and a leading producer of the software system used in game development, this paper shows how the game developers' creative ideas for imagined novel game-playing experiences relate to a) the development of relevant digital technologies, and b) the emergence of new game development practices. The article goes on to propose a view of creativity as an on-going flow that, following an initial ‘creative impulse’, ripples through the sociomaterial entanglements of a particular setting, reconfiguring them in the process and spreading out in time and space in often unexpected ways

Technology, governance, and a sustainability model for small and medium-sized towns in Europe

New and cutting-edge technologies causing deep changes in societies, playing the role of game modifiers, and having a significant impact on global markets in small and medium-sized towns in Europe (SMSTEs) are the focus of this research. In this context, an analysis was carried out to identify the main dimensions of a model for promoting innovation in SMSTEs. The literature review on the main dimensions boosting the innovation in SMSTEs and the methodological approach was the application of a survey directed to experts on this issue. The findings from the literature review reflect that technologies, governance, and sustainability dimensions are enablers of SMSTEs’ innovation, and based on the results of the survey, a model was implemented to boost innovation, being this the major add-on of this research.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio