“This paper offers a conceptualization on the nature of games as a customer offering through classical media considerations. That is, in his seminal treatise on the media, Marshall McLuhan asserted that “The medium is the message.” We have at hand new technology and a new medium – video games. To get some feeling of how gamers extend themselves, we turn to two classics, James Thurber’s Secret Life of Walter Mitty and Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash for some insight. There is an indication that life may indeed be imitating art. In other words, video games provide a significant advancement from a pre-existing situation in a manner analogous to the way Gutenberg’s printing press changed lives through books. Literature has long presented possibilities in which one can be immersed. Through video games, and virtual worlds, this potential has been taken to new heights. According to McLuhan’s treatise they may be providing even greater advances in the way we adapt in the future.”

As usual it’s avalible on academia.edu

Next week, Oct. 5-6, the Game Incubator in Skövde are hosting Swedish Game Conference. The event has loads of activities and speakers that could make this a very interesting two days. For example listening to Nolan Bushnell will be very interesting! I will also step up to the challenge and add bits and pices of smart things to say to this crowd.

The article is an exploration of the research project that Ulf Sandqvist and I have embarked upon ,studying leadership in the video game industry. This industry seem to be wedged between technical possibilities, artistic dreams and financial demands. Not that very far from other cultural industries today.

The development of video games has grown from a playful activity at universities, and military research, in the early 1950s to a professional and profitable industry. Today, the video games industry is one of the major cultural industries with a turnover from sale in the video game industry exceeding that of box office revenues in the film industry. Despite this size is this industry, apart from a few publications (Cadin et al. 2006, Cadin and Guérin 2006, Kerr 2006, Readman and Grantham 2006, Tschang and Szczypula 2006, Walfisz 2006, Zackariasson et al. 2006a, Zackariasson et al 2006b), much ignored in academic research this far. This is about to change, not least in Sweden where theses about video games industry arouses a growing interest (Dymek 2010, Sandqvist 2007, 2010; Zackariasson 2003, 2007).

In this paper we aim to contribute to the discussion about leadership in the borderline between artistic freedom, technical limitations and financial pressure. Today, this is very much where the video game industry is situated. Leadership in cultural organizations, such as video games developer, has a significant role to capture the creativity and channel it towards innovations in production, video games, in this case. Guillet de Monthoux et al. (2007) argues that there is a certain fuzzyness in this type of organization, which places special demands on the leadership to encourage this flow and steer them towards a common goal. This argument is supported by Byrne et al. (2009) who suggests that leadership has an impact on an innovative process in which creative people can express their knowledge. Compared with the assumptions of the individual creative person and its driving force. The reason for the leadership and creativity in computer game development is a very good case to study is that this industry represents the output of today’s cultural and technological society. Video game industry is also an industry which is heavily dependent on -the creativity and artistic creation (Tschang 2007, Zackariasson et al 2006), video games, like other cultural products, designed to stimulate our senses and arouse emotions. The process in which the game develops commute thus between artistic creativity and technical craft.

The reason for writing this text at this time is to put forth a number of thoughts for a research project on leadership in the Swedish video game industry that has just been initiated. For this project we are using both qualitative and quantitative data in order to create knowledge about leadership in this industry. The results of the project will be published in 2014.

Carry on! Understanding Creativity Through Popular Culture – this is an article I’ve been wanting to write since I saw the reality show Project Runway. This is a show about making garments, under very special conditions one might say. One very dominant aspect of that show is the concept of creativity. This article takes on the task of discussing how creativity is understood and communicated throughout the show. Here we make use of Bourdieu and argue that creativity is an outcome of relating to the field and its borders, with the criteria: art, craft and commerce.

Zackariasson, Peter and Styhre, Alexander (2011). Carry on! Understanding Creativity Through Popular Culture. SCOS, Istanbul 14-17 July.

The aim of my presentation is to describe how culture jamming is a method for challenging symbolic representation in public spaces. The impact of digital spaces, and participation in these, makes culture jamming a valuable counter force in the dominance of corporate interests.

Abstract
Following in the wake of Internet technologies the video game industry is today transforming games to service outlets and promotional tools. Games are no longer products that are sold on a point of sale setup; instead developers offer the service to subscribe to games. In the midst of this transformation developers are also making use of the interactivity enabled by Internet technologies and crafts games as a sphere for promotion, a place for other organizations to display their products or services.

This book is an edited collection of academic contributions on the video game industry. Generally speaking, there will be 17 or 18 chapters in the text. Each of these chapters will be written by an individual or individuals who have done serious research in this relatively young, but growing area. The chapters will be grouped in four parts that capture the essence of the industry. Individual chapters will integrate aspects of history, human behavior, technology, business and economics. Part I will describe the nature of the industry as it exists today and aspects of interrelationships in it. Part II will relate to the industry as it has arisen in different parts of the world. Part III reflects the medium itself, which provides a unique platform for entertainment and potential for future development. Part IV extends observations into the future. Basically, the book is positioned to describe and define video games as their own special medium. They are not pinball from which they grew, nor movies which they sometimes resemble. They are a unique form of entertainment based on meaningful interactions between individuals and machine across a growing sector of the population. The need that this book meets is that it will provide a reference foundation for individuals seriously interested in the industry at the academic level. Presently we know of few other books that meet this need. Consequently, we expect papers in it to be widely quoted in subsequent research and also the book itself will serve as a reference in curricula associated with video game development.

The aim of this book is to provide a platform for the research on the videogame industry to draw a coherent and informative picture of this industry. Previously this has been done sparsely through conference papers, research articles and popular science books. Although the study of this industry is still stigmatized as frivolous and ‘only’ game oriented, those of us who grew up with video games are changing things, especially research agendas, the acceptance of studies and their interpretation.

Projektets syfte är att studera ledarskapets premisser inom den kulturella industrin, närmare bestämt inom datorspelsutveckling. Detta är en industri vilken starkt präglas av relationen mellan teknisk kompetens, konstnärligt skapande och vinstkrav. Industrin utgör även ett mycket intressant studieområde då de innehåller flertalet aspekter av ledarskap vilket definierar dagens IT-samhälle.

Projektet skall svara på frågor kring medarbetare, ledar och arbetsorganisationen inom de svenska spelutvecklingsföretagen. Även frågor kring hanteringen av teknisk kompetens och kreativitet inom organisationen samt hur dessa hanteras i förhållande till externa krav från kunder.

Spelindustrin är ett exempel av en kulturell industri som växer fram ur ett lekfullt användande av datorerna men har snabbt vuxit till global storindustri. Datorspelsföretagen verkar i framkanten av teknisk kompetens.
Mycket av dagens högpresterande datorhårdvara utvecklas just för att möjliggöra olika typer av underhållning som datorspel. Detta har skapat en teknisk elit av medarbetare som formar och utvecklar en kulturell produkt under mycket speciella förhållanden.

Projektet skall dessutom försöka fylla ett behov som finns av grundforskning kring de specifika förutsättningar som råden för spelföretagen i ett litet exportberoende land som Sverige. Det finns idag relativt lite forskning kring organisatoriska aspekter i spelindustrin. Dock finns det all möjlighet

I det treåriga projektet samarbetar två forskare: doktor Peter Zackariasson
(företagsekonomi) och doktorand Ulf Sandqvist (ekonomisk historia).
Projektledare Zackariasson har omfattande erfarenheter av kvalitativa studier av spelindustrin. Sandqvist disputerade under 2010 och har djup kunskap om den svenska spelindustrin. Studien kommer att innefatta både enkätundersökningar samt en rad intervjuer med personer inom den svenska spelindustrin.

Ulf Sandqvist and Peter Zackariasson (2010). The Dematerialisation and Democratisation of Currencies: a historical description of currencies and how the physical has been replaced with the virtual. Internet Research 11.0, 21-23 October, Gothenburg Sweden.

Abstract:

Most of us who are participating in virtual worlds are familiar with the economics of these worlds. Selling and buying what we need in order to sustain out virtual presence is a part of the daily life. As participants, and sometimes as trolls or elves, money and barter has been ascribed a significant part of this. The result has been that we interact with virtual marketplaces, just as we interact with every other aspect of our virtual lives. As most of the actions in the real world are economised, the tendency to evaluate relationships and objects from an economic perspective, the threshold to adapt to a virtual market is quite low. Just like many other structures we find in the real world, economy seems to make sense to us and are many times taken for granted.

One might claim that in order to become successful in virtual worlds, especially in MMOG, one must become a good capitalist. If one cannot manage and increase the wealth it is impossible to improve ones equipment and it does not matter how good the skill is in using a dull sword. Thus economy and the understanding of this is not an optional extra, but an essential part that the participant has to learn and master.

The aim of this paper is to describe how currencies have been made a significant part of our virtual lives. This ‘cybercash’ has evolved both from the participants in these worlds (Dibbell 1999, Sinha 1998), and also from developers (Castronova 2002, 2005, Lehdonvirta 2009). Tracking the history of currencies one finds a diverse construction and use of this in trade, a development where the pendulum has shifted between entrepreneurial liberation and centralised control (Einzig 1996, Morgan 1965). At this point we can observe the dematerialization of currencies. We will argue that this dematerialization has the capability to democratise the market and relationships between agents on this, it can tilt the power balance from one centre of calculation (Callon 1998) to several centre of calculations.

Soon after these economic structures were in place virtual goods started to change owners by means of external structures, using real currencies as payment. The economy of virtual worlds was thus connected with the economy in the real world (Castronova 2002, 2005). Thus the capitalistic structures that in most nations were employed to secure wealth and happiness were adapted to the virtual which resulted in the birth of cybercapitalism (Author 2009).

Today this Real Money Trade (RMT), consisting of virtual goods, virtual currencies and services, is a rapid growing industry that is estimated to exceed $100 million (~73,3 million EUR) each year (Castronova 2006). There is even claims from the game industry that it is worth almost nine times that, $887 million (~642 million EUR) (Castronova 2005). Because of this marketplace many times dubious legal status this is not a business that is open, as professional markets in the real world, like the stock trade for example. Thus these estimates only give a rough idea about its impressive size.

There is no doubt that the RMT will continue to grow, both in size and in its content, or applications. The same cybercash might in the future be used to facilitate trade between different virtual worlds, or between a virtual world and the real world. But at this point both RMT and cybercash has a position as second order trade. The legal status has in many cases not been clarified, but more important there has yet to be established a practice on par with the trade activities that is conducted in the real world. It is these two phenomenon, RMT and cybercash, that is the focus of this paper.

Looking at cybercash as an extension of physical currencies this is in line with the dematerialization of currencies that always has been part of conceptualizing currencies. A currency is also a symbolic item that represents an agreed value in a community. As cybercash is gaining ground it does so outside of structures of physical currencies, as such it can form the basis for communities reinvent currencies.

Next week I will present a conference paper at the EASST conference in Trento, Italy. The paper is an exploration of the material from my thesis, about building understanding of game development using an ANT vocabulary.

Zackariasson, Peter (2010). It’s Anarchy! Translating Beliefs and Desires into Prescriptions for Participation in an online game. EASST 010, September 2-4, Trento.

Abstract

This paper explored the production on an MMORPG using an ANT vocabulary. The production of games can equally be understood as building networks and finding allies to make the game idea durable. When filling this game with content developers translate their beliefs about the world that surround them and desires in this into the virtual game world. This results in game worlds that are distilled copies of a physical world, as seen be a small number of video game develpers.