Search

This paper aims to explore whether the development of competitive computer gaming (eSports) industries is sustained in China. In doing so, we apply the Generalized Supremum Augmented Dickey-Fuller (GSADF) method to investigate when the bubbles originated and crashed in the Chinese eSports market from 2014 to 2021. Utilizing the data of the Chinese Electronic Sports Thematic Index (CESI), the empirical outcomes show that the Chinese eSports industry may deviate from its market value and that the industry witnesses bubble behaviors. The latent reasons might be attributed to government policies, economic growth, stock market crises, and venture capital investments. Therefore, to promote the stabilized and sustained development of the eSports industry in China, regulators and authorities should pay attention to the evolution of bubbles. Moreover, maintaining policy consistency and continuity may be beneficial in stabilizing investors' expectations and reducing speculative investment behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject. The authors attempt a legal analysis of several forms of monetization of rights to computer games.The purpose of the article is the legal qualification of donations, crowdfunding, loot boxes as means of monetization.The research methodology includes general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, as well as specific scientific methods of comparative law and formal legal analysis.The scientific problem of the article lies in the existing contradiction between the rapid development of the computer games market and the state of modern legal science in terms of scientific understanding and regulation of the entertainment industry.The main results, scope of application. There are two main forms of public funding in the gaming industry: (1) donations; (2) crowdfunding. Donations are more common for streamers, crowdfunding for computer developers. Donat is money sent without the condition of reciprocity. In recent years, crowdfunding has become a common way to attract investments. The purchase of a digital (or physical) copy of a game is the acquisition of the right to use (access) a computer game. Therefore, the funds we transfer are investments. We become beneficiaries of the published product. As a result, the developer will have to pay taxes on the funds raised. A loot box is a virtual item – a random set of additional features.The process of loot distribution is similar to a game of chance: players choose the level of need for a thing. Lootbox, despite the deceived expectations of the player, still brings some benefits to the player. In other words, the player pays a few dollars and expects to receive something of value in return, but the amount of winnings can be both large and small. In this regard, it seems that the loot box is a classic win-win lottery. Therefore, loot boxes should not be equated with gambling, otherwise the gaming industry could respond by referring to the need to include lotteries (and insurance) as gambling. At the same time, the similarity of several elements indicates that there is always a risk of turning a computer game into gambling.Conclusions. There are a number of ways to monetize the material incentives for players. These methods include donations, funds received in the course of crowdinvesting, as well as loot boxes. Donations are an intermediate phenomenon between donation and payment. For individuals, income from donations will not be taxed if there is no consideration. Also, sometimes donations should be understood as funds from crowdinvestments, which developers sometimes collect to create the next game. These funds, in most cases, should still be treated as developer income, not donations. The boundary between the payment of in-game property and gambling is the phenomenon of loot boxes, which should be qualified as a win-win lottery.

Entrepreneurs have been a driving force in the rapid development of the Chinese digital game industry. However, in previous studies, little attention has been paid to entrepreneurs' business development and performance, especially the ways in which they obtain key resources in the process of venture creation. Because most gaming entrepreneurs in China have wrestled with fundraising difficulties in recent years, this study was conducted to examine how gaming entrepreneurs acquire financial capital from a social capital perspective. Data were collected from 33 in-depth interviews with gaming entrepreneurs who were operating ventures in Shanghai, one of China's major game industry hubs. The data included detailed accounts of the acquisition of financial capital in relation to the local entrepreneurial ecosystem's four capital providers: business angels, venture capitalists, incubators/accelerators, and government funding agencies. The findings showed that the gaming entrepreneurs in this study used diverse patterns of social capital access and mobilization to acquire financial capital. The findings also showed how the entrepreneurs had adjusted their social capital use in response to the worsening financial market. The findings of this study contribute to the literature on the Chinese digital game industry by articulating how gaming entrepreneurs leverage social resources to enact venture creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how entrepreneurs in the Chinese digital game industry initiate their venture creation by investigating the relationship between their social capital and key steps of identifying entrepreneurial opportunities in the premarket entry stage: opportunity recognition and opportunity evaluation. Drawing on semistructured interviews with 33 gaming entrepreneurs in Shanghai, the findings show that social capital plays a minor role in their recognition of opportunities, whereas it substantially affects their opportunity evaluation. These entrepreneurs adopt varied approaches to accessing and mobilizing social capital given their situated industry sectors. Those who focus on commercial game products or services prioritize specific members of professional networks, while those on indie and fledgling game products and services rely more on diverse ones. Such a difference in networking practices is subject to the industry’s overarching dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Toxic behavior in multiplayer video games diminishes the potential revenue of gaming companies by spreading a bad mood, negatively affecting game play, and subsequently leading to the churn of players. However, research investigating why toxic behavior occurs is still scarce. To address this issue, this study disjunctively tests three different theoretical approaches (social cognitive theory, theory of planned behavior, and online disinhibition effect) to explain toxic behavior and propose a unified theory of toxic behavior. Design/methodology/approach: In total, 320 respondents participated in a questionnaire study. This study analyzes the data with covariance-based statistics (i.e. regression analysis and structural equation modelling), and the approach is twofold. First, the hypotheses of three theories are disjunctively tested. Second, a unified theory of toxic behavior is proposed. Findings: The results of this study indicate that online disinhibition best explains toxic behavior, whereby toxic behavior victimization, attitude, and behavioral control also play an important role. Research limitations/implications: The findings of this study offer an opportunity to better understand a contemporary and especially meaningful form of negative behavior online. Practical implications: To maintain revenue and popularity, the computer game industry can use the findings of this study to prevent and better address toxic behavior and its negative consequences. Originality/value: Toxic behavior among video game players is a relatively new and unexplored phenomenon; therefore, this study makes a valuable contribution to the research field by testing the explanatory power of three theoretical approaches and proposing a unified theory of toxic behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trust is transitive among people in social life via personal recommendations as a channel to indirectly improve the first impression a person has on you, which make the person trusts you more, and vice versa. This concept of transitive trust is equally applicable among agents, or NPCs (Non-Player Characters) with the application of Direct Trust and Recommender Trust theories. A replication of trust model involving Direct Trust and Recommender Trust is made in a computer game to observe if inclusion of a 'transitive trust model' improves a game's overall player experience. To replicated trust model is applied into a visual novel game as a base to collect data on how the game experience is improved. The results shown that an increase of game replay-ability to medium-high level is achieved by applying the said trust model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following chapter will discuss the relation between home computer history and computer programming – with a focus on game programming. The nurseries of the early 1980s are the origins of the later computer game industry and the private use of microcomputers becomes an essential part of the 'playful' exploration and emancipation of technology. This is why the contribution that home computing added to the history of digital economics, culture and even thought cannot be estimated high enough. After the definition of central terms and discussing the main problems of the historiography of technology and computing, the main topic separated in decades will be portrayed. The milestones of home computer technology will be linked to the scenes and (sub)cultures of their users. Some of these links will be highlighted. My presentation will not be exhaustive but will try to highlight some of the playful uses of computers – from the perspective of this technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to provide an overview of the studies and literature regarding creative industries, with particular consideration of the video game industry, and define potential areas of further research, among others regarding e-sports. The author seeks to define creative industries, describe the Polish and global video game industries, point to their characteristics and present the development of the Polish and global video game markets providing the examples of the conducted research. The study involves a survey of literature sources, mainly covering the themes related to creative and video game industries, seeks to analyse the global and Polish video game markets based on the data from domestic and international reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital transformation has prompted some organizations to use a service business model that does not require the purchase of a product but, rather, use of their services. Software‐as‐a‐service (SaaS) is a method by which service providers meet the needs of their clients via an internet server. A look at consumers' reactions to the games‐as‐a‐service (GaaS) business model used in the computer games industry illustrates how the model has transformed the industry. It also highlights the importance of timeliness, transparency, and creativity in any SaaS business's efforts to attract and retain customers and optimize profitability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Video games differ from films, books, and other mainstream media both in their interactive capabilities and in their affordances for gameplay. Interactivity and gameplay are closely related, as interactivity is necessary for gameplay. Unfortunately, this close relationship has led many video game scholars to conflate these two concepts when discussing player experience. In this article, I argue that, when discussing emotional responses to video games, gameplay and interactivity should be understood as distinct concepts: Gameplay involves both interactive and noninteractive elements, and interactive works do not always involve gameplay. I propose that there are significant drawbacks to overlooking this distinction and that highlighting it is important for understanding player experience, player emotion, and the ways video games differ from other entertainment media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of interplayer moral conversation in multiplayer games with three subquestions: how to design and use games for morality research, how advances in moral theory can inform game-based research into morals, and how game-based research can inform moral theory. A long tradition has investigated morals using games such as Ultimatum and Dictator ; however, this research often omits interplayer moral dialogue. Further, when moral foundations theory is accounted for, analysis of these games seems to investigate a narrow range of moral reasoning. In this methodological critique, we draw upon data from gameplay of a simulation of climate change debate and find a wide range of moral foundations through analysis of dialogue. Our analysis suggests that in-game player dialogue is a source of rich moral deliberation and potential for using simulation games as grounds for discovering new moral foundations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community management is an important but relatively understudied facet of computer game development. This article begins filling this gap by examining how community managers in the computer game industry manage communities of players through the establishment of structures of membership: positions and practices designed to encourage membership hierarchies. Beginning with the construction of an analytical framework through which to understand different subcommunity activities, this article then examines structures of membership at every stage of Kim's membership life cycle and, ultimately, how those structures help to attract, educate, and retain dedicated community members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite recent improvements, women remain underrepresented in Computer Science (CS) in both industry and higher education. Self-perception and identity play an important role in young women's opinions of careers in CS. We believe that by presenting software programming in a way that facilitates identity exploration early on, young girls will be more likely to consider careers in CS later in life. In partnership with an organization that focuses on technology education for middle school girls we developed a game design workshop in an effort to change young girls' perception of CS by increasing their knowledge of programming and empowering them to develop their own identities as computer scientists. This paper presents the results of a case study with 21 participants that was carried out to evaluate the workshop's short-term influence on young girls' attitudes towards CS. The study employed a mixed methods design, including a pre and post application of a validated survey instrument, focus-group interviews, and content analysis of games developed by the students. The pre and post surveys focused on how students' attitudes towards computing may have been influenced by their participation in the workshop; the focus-group interviews aimed to gain further insight into their workshop experience; and the content analysis of games focused on the learning outcomes of our workshop. The findings suggest that the workshop resulted in improvements in both young girls' attitudes towards CS as well as in their self-reported confidence and competence with computers. These results highlight the importance of providing positive identity exploration opportunities in shaping female students' attitudes towards CS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generating large human crowds of distinguishable individuals is one of the challenges in the gaming industry. When the scene contains many characters, it becomes impracticable to create all the individual characters manually. However, the requirement for the different appearances of individuals in a crowd, namely their faces, is now in greater demand. Therefore, this paper describes our solution to the automatic generation of human faces that are created as a composite of facial parts of 3D scans of real human faces. However, the user has the possibility to further adjust the composite by designing replacements, leading to a desired appearance. The final composite can be exported and attached to a given avatar. To evaluate the usability of our solution, we performed two case studies. The conducted perception study performed with 104 participants aimed to confirm the decreasing human ability to recognize morphologically modified faces. The morphological study focused on the quantification of the extent of facial modifications. Both studies were performed by domain experts from psychology and anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Material design is an important task in game and animation industry. It often requires artist's great efforts to create an elaborate material. Although several successful material editing systems already exist, it is still hard for artists to design a material on their own since these systems usually have neither an intuitive and sufficiently sophisticated material representation nor an artist-friendly editing interface. In this paper, we propose a simple material creation flow and develop a material design system based on an intuitive material representation. With the system, an artist can bring their creativity into play on designing materials that are realistic or imaginary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the Internet has become embedded into the purchasing decision of consumers. The purpose of this paper is to study whether the Internet behavior of users correlates with their actual behavior in computer games market. Rather than proposing the most accurate model for computer game sales, we aim to investigate to what extent web search query data can be exploited to nowcast (contraction of “now” and “forecasting” referring to techniques used to make short-term forecasts) (predict the present status of) the ranking of mobile games in the world. Google search query data is used for this purpose, since this data can provide a real-time view on the topics of interest. Various statistical techniques are used to show the effectiveness of using web search query data to nowcast mobile games ranking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Research Papers of the Wroclaw University of Economics / Prace Naukowe Uniwersytetu Ekonomicznego we Wroclawiu is the property of Uniwersytet Ekonomiczny we Wroclawiu and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

After over a decade of scholarly research and well-documented harassment, sexism, and other forms of exclusion and marginalization, digital games culture is currently the object of heightened attention and discourse related to diversity and inclusion. This paper considers the context of this shift with a particular focus on the relationship between gender-focused inclusivity-based action in the form of women-in-games incubators, post-feminist discourse, and the neoliberal context of digital games production. As opposed to rife anti-feminism and similar “backlash” sentiments, articulations of post-feminism within the digital game industry provide insights into the tensions inherent in introducing action for change within a conservative culture of production, particularly for women in the industry. At the same time, the contradictions and tensions of the post-feminist ethos allow for actions that function through this logic while subverting it. Through a brief consideration of three exemplary post-feminist articulations by visible female figures in the North American digital games community, this article explores the challenges and opportunities presented by the gaps and contradictions of post-feminism in games culture and production. It concludes with equal measures of caution and optimism, indicating future directions for study and activism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]