The Dynamics of Co-Creation in the Video Game Industry: The Case of World of Warcraft

These latest years have seen both an increasing development of Users Generated Content (UGC) on the Internet and a growing number of free transactions of these contents through online communities. The video game industry shares this general trend and we shall examine it in detail through the example of a worldwide success game, World of Warcraft (WoW). This massively multiplayer online (MMO) game exhibits two specific economic characteristics. The first one is that the original content is produced by a game developer who keeps intellectual property rights while leaving open to players some possibilities to modify that original content into an enhanced content. We call this innovation process, which involves both the participation of the producer and of consumers, co-creation. Based on a typology of the different UGC in WoW, we specify the meaning of co-creation and put forward some arguments on the players' motivations to co-create and their consequences on the attractiveness of the gameplay to the players' community. The second characteristic is that co-creation is not limited to the design of the game before its marketing. It is a continuous interaction between players and developer even after its marketing. This dynamic process requires both regulatory actions by the developer and a new industrial organization to distribute these UGC through the WoW players' community.open innovation, online community, video game, innovative user, customization

Uncovering the Role of Hubs: A Network Science Perspective on Platform Competition

This paper offers a novel legal framework to evaluate competition among digital platforms. Drawing on network science, it debunks two prominent approaches in antitrust law, that network effects either lead to a winner-takes-all situation or, conversely, that they safeguard against platform market power abuses. It coins the term “hub-plucking” to highlight a critical dynamic of platform competition that has surprisingly gone unnoticed: the competition between platforms over highly connected “hubs”. Hub-plucking enables rivaling platforms, including new entrants, to instantly acquire market share by seizing hubs. Since many platforms of interest exhibit hubs, hub-plucking is applicable to a multitude of industries and is thus crucial for competitive analysis. The paper demonstrates the viability of hub-plucking as a major restraint on platform market power. It analyzes the relative advantages of fledgling platforms over dominant ones in acquiring hubs, and provides empirical examples of industries where hub-plucking was successfully implemented to dethrone platform incumbents. Serving as a proof-of-concept for showcasing network science’s enormous potential for advancing antitrust law, the paper last entertains two proposals for expanding antitrust’s arsenal of potential interventions in the platform context

O impacto das microtransações num mundo digital

Mestrado em Gestão e Estratégia IndustrialEsta dissertação procura deduzir e medir o impacto que as microtransações causam na indústria dos videojogos, tanto do lado dos jogadores, como também dos prestadores de serviços, utilizando como base informação e dados recolhidos através de inquéritos online realizados a jogadores frequentes de videojogos, como também através de entrevistas semi-estruturadas a duas pessoas especialistas e experientes na área. Partindo dos inquéritos online, houve uma tentativa de entender se existe algum tipo de correlação entre as variáveis: rendimento bruto anual do agregado familiar de um jogador, consumo médio mensal de microtransações e número de horas semanais despendidas em jogo. Através das entrevistas, foi possível obter opiniões e perspetivas um pouco divergentes, em relação à forma como cada um observa o fenómeno. Todas as variantes de microtransações existentes foram devidamente explicadas, enunciando que tipo de implicações positivas e negativas elas podem gerar. Foi feito também um contexto histórico de como as microtransações evoluíram ao longo do tempo, argumentando que tipo de fatores poderão estar na base do surgimento das mesmas. Finalmente, foi suportado sempre que possível, dados estatísticos que comprovem a importância e relevância das microtransações na indústria dos videojogos.This dissertation seeks to deduce and measure the impact that microtransactions have on the video game industry, both on the player's and service provider's side, based on information and data collected through online surveys answered from frequent video game players, as well as through semi-structured interviews with two experts and experienced workers in the video game industry. It was made a study if there is any kind of correlation between the following variables: player's household annual gross income, average monthly microtransaction consumption and number of hours per week spent playing. Through the interviews, it was possible to obtain somewhat divergent opinions and perspectives on how each one observes the phenomenon. All variants of existing microtransactions have been properly explained, stating what kind of positive and negative implications they can generate. It was also made a historical context of how microtransactions have evolved over time, arguing what kind of factors may underlie their emergence. Finally, statistical data supporting the importance and relevance of microtransactions in the video game industry were supported whenever possible.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

How does co-creation occur in the gaming communities? The case of league of legends

As an emerging topic in Marketing, co-creation has been studied in the literature but there isn’t a clear definition yet. In this Work Project, we investigated how co-creation occurs using a case from the gaming community – League of Legends - as it ensured, after careful analysis, the conditions for co-creation. Important insights arose from the Work Project on how co-creation occurs in the gaming community. In particular, we show the complexity of motivations behind co-creation, from the gamers (i.e. consumers), and from the manager’s perspective

EDU

Esta dissertação analisa os mais rentáveis videojogos .EDU, ou seja, para a aprendizagem, no Brasil a partir das listas top grossing na App Store e na Google Play, com o objetivo de explorar seus elementos de game design e de in-game marketing. Apresentamos um panorama das estratégias mais utilizadas, tanto nos jogos pagos quanto naqueles chamados free-to-play, para torná-los eficientes, ao mesmo tempo, do ponto de vista mercadológico e educativo.This master thesis analyses the most profitable digital educational games in Brazil and aims to explore their game design and in-game marketing strategies. After studying the grossing charts from App Store and Google Play, a panorama with the most common strategies on paid and free-to-play products is presented, to make them efficient both from educational and marketing standpoints

Player concerns about MMORPG monetization

This master’s thesis is about monetization in video games, focusing on two games from the MMORPG genre, Lost Ark and RuneScape. These two video games are the basis of the research, and the research is a text/game analytical study, where the focus has been to describe, examine, compare – and contrast the two games, monetization models. Current research on monetization in video games is mainly about how monetization is negative for players and how it affects players. This project has aimed to discover nuances that can enrich current monetization research by researching players' insight on monetization and gameplay. Lost Ark and RuneScape are similar in that multiple game versions exist. There is the Western version of Lost Ark, but the main version is the Korean version. RuneScape instead has RuneScape 3 and Old School RuneScape, which was brought back for players that missed the old version of RuneScape before the changes made for RuneScape transitioning into RuneScape 3. These versions have overt differences in game mechanics and monetization models, and these differences are discussed. The project's primary goal has been to analyze and discuss players' concerns and what players have to say about the monetization of the two games, specifically, how players associate monetization with the gameplay elements of Lost Ark and RuneScape, with the use of the social media system Reddit, which is commonplace for discussing the games, and is the basis and the data for seeing what players say. This means the project showcases many comments by Reddit users, explaining what they convey and analyzing it to the monetization models and gameplay with which players associate their comments. Where the general audience believes monetization is hated because it costs money, is seemed predatory, or can be tied to gambling, the findings show that players in some cases do not hate the monetization systems because of that; instead, because the monetization models are poorly implemented and intertwined with the gameplay aspect of the games, such as players' progression on their character, monetized cosmetics being tied to player characters strength, additional benefits tied to subscription being necessary for every player to play the game efficiently, and having to play another game mode to escape from monetization. The conclusions found are that game companies deliberately create monetization systems for their games to earn revenue, but at times, the scope of how it might affect the gameplay is unclear to the developers, and because of that, some player's problem with monetization is that it can affect too much of a game's gameplay.Mastergradsoppgave i digital kulturDIKULT350MAHF-DIKU

Diversity and Innovation: The Effects of Diverse Creator Teams on Video Game Characteristics and Sales

I analyze the effects of gender diversity on video game production teams. I hypothesize teams with greater gender diversity produce more games with uncommon characteristics than less diverse teams, and the games these teams develop generate higher revenue and unit sales compared to games developed by less diverse teams. I find teams with more women disproportionately develop games that are non-violent and have playable female leads. I examine whether there is an optimal ratio of women to hire for each game genre in order to maximize revenue by analyzing the relationship between the percentage of women on a team in each genre and total revenue. While I do see evidence of firms over- or under-hiring women in some genres before 2001, it appears for the most part firms have optimized their hiring practices in regards to gender diversity from 2001 onward

Learnings From The Case of Maple Refugees: A Story of Loot Boxes, Probability Disclosures, and Gamer Consumer Activism

The article synthesises what we learned from reviewing the player activism of the “Maple refugee” incident and applies the insights to the European video game industry and commercial context. The Maple Refugee incident was perhaps one of the most disruptive video game incidents that occurred in South Korea in recent years. It saw tens of thousands of Korean players from the game Maple Story (Nexon, 2003) mobilised in unprecedented online and offline protests in Spring 2021. Together with players from other free-to-play (F2P) games, Maple Story players rallied against the industry norms of monetising with loot boxes and the industry self-regulatory approach to probability disclosures to address potential harms. This culminated in the social phenomenon of the proxy activism method of ’truck protests,’ rallies of crowdfunded rented trucks displaying protest messages instead of people mass-gathering in public during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the English timeline of the incident collated by Park et al. (2023), we dive deeper into the case with a multidisciplinary group of experts from game studies, law, and human-computer interaction and highlight various issues present in this case: the regulation of loot boxes and probability disclosures, the social pillars of player activism, player trust and theorycrafting, and game production. The paper contributes to the deepening of the industry’s understanding of F2P game business while diversifying the Western-centric discourse of the game research landscape by calling for further cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary inquiries into current video game issues

Why and how can co-creation lead to the exclusion of potential brand community members in the gaming sector? The case of league of legends

Co-creation has become a very important topic in Marketing both in theory and practice. This work project specifically investigates how co-creation can exclude potential brand community members in the gaming sector. This topic was explored through a longitudinal single case study on the online video game League of Legends. The insights suggest that, contrary to what the current literature states, co-creation does not necessarily beneficiate all participants, due to the creation of a complex community dynamic that tends to drive away new members, which does not beneficiate the company and reflects on the type of value generated for the members

‘It’s in the game’: FIFA videogames and the misuse of history

Videogames are a still understudied component of sports history despite their growing importance in sporting and leisure fields. Videogames help engage and include sporting fans, are more interactive than spectating and, in some ways, help solidify sporting narratives. As videogames grew in popularity and marketability in the 2000s, developers sought ways to connect their games with their respective sports’ histories. This is most notably seen in the inclusion of ‘classic’ or ‘legends’ teams within videogames. Since the early 2000s, football, rugby, cricket, and wrestling, among others, have begun to include legendary athletes and teams within their games. Studying the popular FIFA videogame franchise produced by Electronic Arts (EA), this article brings together several strands of research to examine the use, and abuse, of history within the franchise. In doing so, it argues that EA has largely used history problematically for profit motives. While superficially, history is used in an anodyne manner in these games, the kinds of history told, and the linking of historical athletes to in-play purchases, create various problems for how history is told among popular sporting audiences