The Industry of Landlords: Exploring the Assetization of the Triple-A Game

Abstract

The monetization of the modern Triple-A game has undergone severe changes, as free-to-play revenue models and game as a service distribution strategy have become standard for game developers. To date, the established tradition of the industry’s political–economic analysis focused on the value extraction and user exploitation of video game as a cultural commodity, centered on the video game as generating value through the selling of boxed or digital units. In this article, we present a new analytical framework grounded in understanding the modern video game as an asset that continuously generates revenue for its owners. This theoretical lens encapsulates the changes in contemporary game development, distribution, and value generation. To demonstrate, we apply it to the analysis of the monetization strategies of three recent free-to-play Triple-A titles: Fortnite (2017), Apex Legends (2019), and Call of Duty: Warzone (2020).

Neural production networks: AI’s infrastructural geographies

“…Building on Sadowski (2019) and Birch and Cochrane (2022), I argue that lead firms are orchestrators of rentier relations ‘that bring users into the respective enclaves where they can be monetised’ (p. 6). Rentier relations can be defined as economic transactions ‘where rentiers capture revenue from providing access to digital assets’ (Bernevega and Gekker, 2022: 51). The notion of rentier relations captures that lead firms in neural production networks are proprietors of computational infrastructures without which other actors could not use AI.…”

“…In recent years, a range of scholars has argued that we witness a dissolution of the commodity form in certain industries – a development that coincides with changing cultural practices. Bernevega and Gekker (2022) argue that modern video games, such as the highly successful free-to-play online game Fortnite, are ‘neither produced nor monetized as a commodity’ (p. 53). Instead, game studios aim to extract value from micro-transactions, whereby players buy virtual assets to equip their avatars with fancy clothes or eccentric hairstyles.…”

Pricing of Consumer Innovations

“…Examples of triple A games are "World of Warcraft" from Blizzard, "FIFA" from EA Sports or "Tomb Raider" from Ubisoft and Square Enix. These firms and their popular games also received the most research coverage in the past (Cohendet and Simon, 2007;Tschang, 2007;Huntemann and Aslinger, 2016;Bernevega and Gekker, 2021).…”

Techniques of commensuration in the videogame industry

“…Chiming with common scholarly understandings of platforms and data (see e.g. Sadowski, 2020; Srnicek, 2017), data generated through user interactions is framed as a source of continual value – (see Sadowski, 2020; Bernevega and Gekker, 2021). In this way, metrics work to make the attention and engagement of videogame audiences a discrete and measurable object.…”

“…For example, scholarship has focused on how videogames discretise player activity in the forms of data interfaces, marketed a means for improvement of one’s skill, theorized to keep users enrolled platform ecosystems. Relatedly, the servitization of games has led to game developers capturing large volumes of commensurated player activity as data (Bernevega and Gekker, 2021), the means through which players are made saleable to advertisers.…”