The Object of Platform Studies: Relational Materialities and the Social Platform (the case of the Nintendo Wii)

Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System,by Ian Bogost and Nick Montfort, inaugurated thePlatform Studies series at MIT Press in 2009.We’ve coauthored a new book in the series, Codename: Revolution: the Nintendo Wii Video Game Console. Platform studies is a quintessentially Digital Humanities approach, since it’s explicitly focused on the interrelationship of computing and cultural expression. According to the series preface, the goal of platform studies is “to consider the lowest level of computing systems and to understand how these systems relate to culture and creativity.”In practice, this involves paying close attentionto specific hardware and software interactions--to the vertical relationships between a platform’s multilayered materialities (Hayles; Kirschenbaum),from transistors to code to cultural reception. Any given act of platform-studies analysis may focus for example on the relationship between the chipset and the OS, or between the graphics processor and display parameters or game developers’ designs.In computing terms, platform is an abstraction(Bogost and Montfort), a pragmatic frame placed around whatever hardware-and-software configuration is required in order to build or run certain specificapplications (including creative works). The object of platform studies is thus a shifting series of possibility spaces, any number of dynamic thresholds between discrete levels of a system

How creative versus technical constraints affect individual learning in an online innovation community

Online innovation communities allow for a search for novel solutions within a design space bounded by constraints. Past research has focused on the effect of creative constraints on individual projects, but less is known about how constraints affect learning from repeated design submissions and the effect of the technical constraints that are integral to online platforms. How do creative versus technical constraints affect individual learning in exploring a design space in online communities? We analyzed ten years of data from an online innovation community that crowdsourced 136,989 design submissions from 33,813 individuals. We leveraged data from two types of design contests-creatively constrained and unconstrained-running in parallel on the platform, and we evaluated a natural experiment where a platform change reduced technical constraints. We find that creative constraints lead to high rates of learning only if technical constraints are sufficiently relaxed. Our findings have implications for the management of creative design work and the downstream effects of the technical constraints of the information systems that support online innovation communities

STRATEGIC ANALYSIS FOR V7 ENIGMA

V7 Entertainment, a Vancouver, BC based video gaming company is conductinga feasibility study on technology for a brand new game console that they havedubbed V7 Enigma. The technology uses field programmable gate arrays to allocate console hardware resources dynamically to different engines for a game. V7 must decide how they should strategically enter the game console market. This paper examines external and internal factors and recommends an optimalstrategy among different alternatives of which V7 can use to enter the market.The game console industry is highly competitive and has great barriers to entry.Entering requires high set up costs and both direct and indirect network effectsprofoundly influence the market. V7 has strengths in innovation; however, these strengths are not in the hardware field. This paper recommends that V7 avoid entering the highly competitive game console market directly, but instead, licence the technology to existing hardware manufacturers

Two-sided Markets : Competition of Marketplaces

Two-sided markets have become a major topic of an academic discussion in the past two decades. This discussion is fueled by the growing importance of the two-sided market platforms in the econ-omy. The ongoing growth of these platforms has sparked multiple models and point of views in the academic discussion. Thus, there are overlapping models and definitions for this phenomenon. This study introduces the reader to the subject. It does this by starting from the foundations of the two-sided market literature and from previously established network effect literature which has later influenced the development of two-sided market literature. The study then finds a suitable definition for the phenomenon. The thesis then introduces some key pieces of the current literature regarding two-sided markets. It analyzes different theories and draws connections between them. The main focuses in the analysis, are to find suitable definitions for the phenomenon and to explore different competition situations and dynamics. The study also finds and presents suitable empirical examples for the presented theories. The examples are mainly from previous studies. There are two key points in presenting the examples. First, to draw the connection between the presented theory and empirical examples. And second, present and analyze possible effects that the two-sided markets have on their surrounding economies

Аналіз технології створення базового програмного забезпечення для комп’ютерних ігор

Дипломна робота: 123 с., 29 рис., 2 дод., 12 джерел. Об'єкт дослідження – ігрові рушії та засоби розробки графічних ігрових рушіїв. Метою роботи є дослідження засобів розробки базового програмного забезпечення для комп’ютерних ігор на основі аналізу жанрової класифікації ігор, і розробка власного графічного рушія з використанням пакету бібліотек lwjgl. Методом дослідження є аналіз літератури, досліджень і розробок відомих компаній на предмет пошуку найбільш ефективних засобів розробки базового програмного забезпечення для комп’ютерних ігор. В результаті виконання дипломної роботи був розроблений графічний ігровий рушій, який спеціалізується на RPG-дослідницьких іграх з великою ігровою картою, який з невеликим доопрацюванням можна перетворити в комплексний ігровий рушій, для створення складних ігрових сцен, та використовувати для роботи у ААА проектах. Також було запропоновано комп’ютерний практикуми з використання доопрацювання донного рушія для вивчення дисципліни «Технології створення освітніх комп'ютерних ігор та проектування доповненої реальності».The object of research - game engines and tools for developing graphic game engines. The aim of the work is to study the means of developing basic software for computer games based on the analysis of genre classification of games, and to develop your own graphical engine using the lwjgl library package. The research method is the analysis of the literature, research and development of well-known companies in order to find the most effective means of developing basic software for computer games. As a result of the thesis, a graphic game engine was developed, which specializes in RPG-research games with an open world, which with a little refinement can be turned into a complex game engine to create complex game scenes and use to work in AAA projects. A computer workshop on the use of bottom engine refinement to study the discipline "Technologies for creating educational computer games and designing augmented reality" was also proposed