Visualising a “good game”: analytics as a calculative engine in a digital environment

Abstract

Visualising a "good game": analytics as a calculative engine in a digital environmentPurpose This research concerns the use of analytics as a calculative engine enabling coordination and control for the development process in a creative digital business environment. Design/methodology/approach This research employs an explorative field study approach, using interview data from professionals working with free-to-play mobile game development. Drawing on the concepts of cycles of accumulation, accounting as an engine and mediating instruments, this study examines how organisational actors using the analytics in a digital business environment participate in the data generation that accumulates knowledge about and new insights into the desired outcome. Findings The real-time metrics provided the means for organisational actors to continually monitor, visualise and if necessary intervene in the creative "good game" development process. Timely quantification and visualisation of user actions, collected as digital traces, enhanced the cycle of information accumulation. This new knowledge resulted in a desire for improvement and perfection, which directed the actions towards the organisational objectives. Originality/value This study furthers our understanding of the performativity of accounting as an engine and the user behavioural data traces as its "fuel" in a digital product development. It highlights the role of analytics as a "fact-generating" device, capable of transforming the raw user behavioural data, the fuel, into powerful explanations through visualisations of ideals. The real-time metrics, understood as mediating instruments, enable the generation of new insights and accumulation of knowledge guiding the further development towards the desired outcome, the "good game".

Exploring the programmability of management accounting work for increasing automation: an interventionist case study

“…Chen et al , 2012; Arnaboldi et al , 2017b; Viale et al , 2017; Lassila et al , 2019; Stormi et al , 2019). Data can be more easily available from various sources (Al-Htaybat and von Alberti-Alhtaybat, 2017) and could thus support the attainment of organizational objectives (Lassila et al , 2019). Some authors connect digitalization to efficiency, efficacy and automation (e.g.…”

“…Rikhardsson and Yigitbasioglu, 2018; Moll and Yigitbasioglu, 2019; Perkhofer et al , 2020) and benefiting from, for example, earlier and deeper access to internal (Vasarhelyi et al , 2015) and external data (e.g. Chen et al , 2012; Arnaboldi et al , 2017b; Viale et al , 2017; Lassila et al , 2019; Stormi et al , 2019). Data can be more easily available from various sources (Al-Htaybat and von Alberti-Alhtaybat, 2017) and could thus support the attainment of organizational objectives (Lassila et al , 2019).…”

Exploring the “theory is king” thesis in accounting research: the case of actor-network theory

“…, 2018; Boedker et al. , 2020; Lassila et al. , 2019; McLaren and Appleyard, 2020) or only offer limited, if any, methodological reflections (MacKenzie, 2009; Millo and MacKenzie, 2009; Roberts and Jones, 2009; Kastberg, 2014; Cuckston, 2018) but still remain relatively faithful to the methodological tenets of “classic ANT”.…”

“…However, the extent to which abductive reasoning is applied varies and, in most of the papers, it does not detract too much from their descriptive process accounts by overloading these accounts with abstract theoretical reflections. Some studies are a little less detailed when it comes to describing the intricate processes through which accounting becomes performative (Cuckston, 2018, 2019; Lassila et al. , 2019; McLaren and Appleyeard, 2020).…”

“…Several of them make explicit references to key methodological principles associated with ANT, such as the need to follow multiple human and non-human actors as they go about constructing actor-networks, to advance highly descriptive, open-ended process accounts of how accounting becomes performative (Skaerbaek, 2009;Skaerbaek and Tryggestad, 2010;Vinnari and Skaerbaek, 2014;Georg and Justesen, 2017;Themsen and Skaerbaek, 2018;Kastberg and Lagstr€ om, 2019;Pucci and Skaerbaek, 2020). Other papers are less explicitly grounded in these principles (Christensen and Skaerbaek, 2007;Revellino and Mouritsen, 2015;Ferreira, 2017;Jollands et al, 2018;Boedker et al, 2020;Lassila et al, 2019;McLaren and Appleyard, 2020) or only offer limited, if any, methodological reflections (MacKenzie, 2009;Millo and MacKenzie, 2009;Roberts and Jones, 2009;Kastberg, 2014;Cuckston, 2018) but still remain relatively faithful to the methodological tenets of "classic ANT". The empirical accounts in these papers generally have a highly descriptive flavor and document how the performative effects of accounting emerge and unfold although the depth of their process analyses varies somewhat.…”