toward economic platform studies
TRANSCRIPT
toward economic platform studies
Sebastian Deterding (@dingstweets) Digital Creativity Labs, University of York
April 18, 2016 cb
how do economic conditions
game aesthetics
afford ?
economic platform studies
constrain
why should we study this?
»I’ve come to see sustainability as the most pressing issue for keeping the margins of indie games from fraying ... Support for games as an artform ... means recognizing the importance of creating an infrastructure to support the medium and not just the commerce.«
- john sharp on why he left indiecade
what do i mean?
economic conditions
game aesthetics
economic conditions
game aesthetics
Taboo
»There’s no other word for it except evil.« - jonathan blow on social games
game design
game play
game design
game play
game design
game play
game design
game play
micropayment
friend recruitment
business data
monetisation
social games
social game designers openly “talk shop”
social games
economic conditions aesthetic forms
• Freemium revenue model • Game-as-a-service • Rich user analytics • High economies of scale • Vast reach
• Free-to-play • Hyper-casual difficulty,
positive themes • “Dark patterns” that
drive acquisition, retention, monetisation
• Maximise user acquisition and lifetime monetisation
nothing new under the sun
nothing new under the sun
nothing new under the sun
microtransaction
moral outrage
design response
coin-op arcade games
economic conditions aesthetic forms
• Luck-based gambling outlawed • Extracting money from public
space passer-byes• Flashy exterior • Skill-based gameplay, no
monetary payout • Limited attempts of
short duration • Easy to pick up • Steep difficulty curve • High replay value
• Pay-per-play revenue model
• Maximise desire to start and continue
• Minimise play per pay
aaa games
137 mio. US$ development 128 mio. US$ marketing 60 mio. copies shipped since 2013 1 bn. US$ revenue in first 3 days
aaa games
economic conditions aesthetic forms
• One-time, upfront purchase • high economies of scale • high purchase risk for consumers • saturated market
Heavily marketed blockbusters to reduce risk
• Few titles • Established genres,
stories, mechanics • Sequeling established IP • High production values • Marketable, “flashy”
features
• high risk/reward for producers
game design
game play
aaa games
economic conditions
how do we theorise this?
context text
a contextualising question
text ???
context ???
economic platform studies
game
platform
platform studies
film style
mode of production
production studies
business models
a suggestion
business ecosystems
conventions
styles, genres
how do we study this?
initial suggestions
• Comparing across cases, times, cultures, places, media surfaces the taken-for-granted.
• We need to identify in what wholes economic conditions and aesthetic forms occur “in the wild” and then taxonomise those.
• We need to trace in empirical detail how one affects the other.
1. All game aesthetics are affected by economic conditions. 2. At any given point, certain forms and degrees of economic impact is normalised; deviations are met with moral outrage. 3. “how?” is the question of economic platform studies. 4. Answering it can help nurture the aesthetic forms we find desirable. 5. Economic conditions can be traced as functional wholes within functional wholes: business models in ecosystems. 6. Aesthetic forms can be traced as wholes of conventions: styles, genres. 7. Next steps are taxonomising the two and tracing their linkage.
in summary
