Balancing the Tensions Between Rationalization and Creativity in the Video Games Industry

Abstract

This paper investigates the forces that influence creativity in the video games industry. We adopt a qualitative approach to guide the development of grounded theory across multiple levels of analysis, including the industry (consisting of multiple actors), organizational, and individual creator levels. Our study shows that business and production interests currently drive the rationalization of video game production. There is a maturing trend, with product designs becoming well established as genres, and consumers and publishers desiring incrementally innovative games. This leads publishers to focus on acquiring intellectual property, and publishers and studios alike to make incrementally innovative sequels. The increasing complexity of products leads to further rationalization in their development. However, the need to satisfy consumers' continually evolving tastes and game developers' inclinations to be creative also creates tensions with these rational forces. Different actors balance these tensions differently. Studios may seek to balance these by shifting between more and less innovative products, by creating original intellectual property to increase their bargaining power with publishers, and by iterating and repositioning products during development to adapt them to the market. Publishers may enhance their portfolio by hiring highly creative designers into their stable. New products are created through combinative creativity, that is, the recombination of existing ideas from different sources into new products. The connection of combinative mechanisms with the balancing behavior at the firm level provides a means for understanding the evolution of innovative products and, therefore, industries.

Game Changer: The Topology of Creativity

“…Its unprecedented growth has been sparked by nearly relentless innovation across several cycles of successive generations of gaming consoles driving changes in "game mechanics" and game design rules (Aoyama and Izushi 2003;Tschang 2007;Bissell 2011).…”

“…In this perpetual search for an ever more creative (yet always unresolved) tension between the framed (fixed) narrative and the fluid "ludonarrative," a new video game project seeks to differentiate itself from others by introducing radically new game mechanics, new perspectives, and enhanced graphics as well as by crafting new genre combinations and new narrative strategies of character development made possible by (and, in turn, further stimulating) new technological capabilities (Delmestri, Montanari, and Usai 2005;Tschang 2007;Bissell 2011;De Vaan 2014). Video game production is thus a setting of continuous innovation motivated by the need to cope with episodic technological disruptions amidst incessant demand by consumers and critics for fresh ideas.…”

Introduction au dossier thématique - Créativité, PME et entrepreneuriat : des zones d’ombre et de lumière

“…Tschang (2007) décrit ce secteur particulier : les studios indépendants ont la charge du travail créatif, les éditeurs assument davantage la partie financière et marketing du jeu et les utilisateurs/consommateurs expriment leurs besoins et testent le jeu. Ces trois catégories de rôle ne sont pas étanches les unes par rapport aux autres ; elles sont amenées à se mélanger.…”

Specialized organizations and ambidextrous clusters in the open innovation paradigm

“…One has also relied on a qualitative methodology of interviews 2 combined with archival or secondary data (Tschang, 2007). This research is based on the analysis of Lucent Technologies and Cisco SystemsÕ financial reports (10-K documents declared to the Security and Exchange Commission) from 1992 to 2006.…”