Studying Game Development Cultures

Abstract

By analyzing and contextualizing different aspects of the Finnish game development scene, this article provides concrete examples of why we need cultural studies of game development and how game development cultures can be studied. The article follows a three-layer approach, first exploring some of the historical and political developments that have shaped forms of local game production. Second, a focus is placed on working cultures within the industry and attitudes toward crunch time, work–life balance, and workplace regulation. Third, everyday strategies of organizing creative work are analyzed to better understand game studio cultures. The lessons from this empirical study directly contribute to the larger scholarly discussions around game production and creative labor.

Learning Information Ethical Decision Making With a Simulation Game

“…The contexts and rules of the real world can be simulated in such games to provide learners with practical scenarios ( Zagal, 2009 ) for practicing decision making and problem-solving ( Hodhod et al, 2011 ). But compared with the rapidly growing number of studies on gaming media or interfaces ( Fu et al, 2022 ) or the gaming industry ( Sotamaa, 2021 ), empirical research efforts on serious games in disciplinary learning, especially the consideration of professional ethics in information ethics education, remain scarce. Previous empirical studies focused mainly on the general ethical issues, contexts, and skills within experience-based field practices such as hospitals ( Lorenzini et al, 2015 ), the software engineering industry ( Xenos and Velli, 2018 ), and citizen ethics ( Hodhod et al, 2011 ; Bagus et al, 2021 ).…”

Resilient Values in Game Industry Formation: Institutional Perspective to the Finnish Context

“…In this paper, we have explored the Finnish game industry ecosystem from the perspective of values and how they contribute to legitimizing and institutionalizing the industry over time. While previous industry-level studies have yielded temporal snapshots (e.g., Keogh, 2019b; Sotamaa, 2021), findings from this study contribute to the current body of knowledge by highlighting the importance of values in developing, sustaining, and transforming local and regional hotspots. This was highlighted in the respondents reinforcing the values and abiding by them even when they switched employers or established new companies.…”

“…This has allowed us to investigate how individuals embedded in the context have experienced and made sense of the developments taking place in the industry. We chose to focus on Helsinki specifically as almost every second game development company is located there (Neogames, 2017, 2019) and the historical origins of the Finnish video game industry are also situated in the capital region (e.g., Lappalainen, 2016; Sotamaa, 2021).…”

“…Competitive advantages do not come only from traditional factors of competitive advantage such as price, location, and speed but also from esthetic judgements when developing games (Salen & Zimmerman, 2003; Schell, 2008). Answering Sotamaa’s (2021) call for studies combining both the macro and the micro level, with this longitudinal study we contribute to the existing body of knowledge that looks at video game production in geographically situated contexts (e.g., Jørgensen, 2019; Keogh, 2019b). We do so by drawing on institutional theory to explain how the video game industry in Finland seems to have been developed by embedded actors that utilize resilient values as a discursive strategy, first to demarcate the boundaries of the industry and later to expand those boundaries.…”

“…With the proliferation of technologies and digital platforms, contemporary game development firms’ value propositions have become more complex (Zackariasson & Wilson, 2013). At the same time, as Kerr (2017) has observed, a considerable share of the video game industry’s global revenue is captured by a few dozen firms, but apart from this consolidation there are numerous local and regional hotspots where game development firms of various sizes are creating games with diverse esthetics and value propositions (e.g., Jørgensen, 2019; Keogh, 2019b; Sotamaa, 2021). Building on this, Keogh (2019a) posits that the hype surrounding the rapid increase of video game industry’s global revenues has meant that the field’s local settings and practices have received less attention.…”