This book explores key contemporary issues in participatory media culture, including questions of technology, labour and professional expertise.

Involving customers in the development and production of new services becomes a powerful force across many creative industries. Customers can directly supply the firm with innovative ideas, provide skilled labour, and act as a powerful force in marketing. Firms across the world, as they seek to innovate and to better respond to market needs, begin to recognize the benefits stemming from customers’ involvement in their operations. Co-creation also becomes more prevalent as customers begin to expect it from firms – seeking to influence their favourite services or products, and to have them better tailored to their needs. Nevertheless, empowering the customers and involving them in the internal affairs of a firm is both difficult and risky. Despite co-creation becoming increasingly important to firms, very few accounts of it exist and many firms fail. Therefore, to navigate those straits, and to reap the benefits of co-creation, requires knowledge and more complete understanding of socio-cultural forces underpinning it. By studying a wide array of videogames firms in the USA and Europe, this book provides a unique insight into co-creation. It builds on the existing theories to provide unified framework for understanding co-creation in creative industries and other sectors. It combines insights from the dynamics of customer communities, with firm’s perspective on innovation management and organizational transformation. The book offers highly detailed insights into the industry, which is at the forefront of co-creation. Furthermore, it sheds new light on the videogames firms and their operations and is therefore ideally designed for researchers, educators, and students alike in the fields of knowledge management, innovation management, firm strategy, organization studies and creativity management.

They Create Worlds: The Story of the People and Companies That Shaped the Video Game Industry, Vol. 1 is the first in a three-volume set that provides an in-depth analysis of the creation and evolution of the video game industry. Beginning with the advent of computers in the mid-20th century, Alexander Smith’s text comprehensively highlights and examines individuals, companies, and market forces that have shaped the development of the video game industry around the world. Volume one, places an emphasis on the emerging ideas, concepts, and games developed from the commencement of the budding video game art form in the 1950s and 1960s through the first commercial activity in the 1970s and early 1980s. They Create Worlds aims to build a new foundation upon which future scholars and the video game industry itself can chart new paths. Key Features: The most in-depth examination of the video game industry ever written, They Create Worlds charts the technological breakthroughs, design decisions, and market forces in the United States, Europe, and East Asia that birthed a $100 billion industry. The books derive their information from rare primary sources such as little-studied trade publications, personal papers collections, and oral history interviews with designers and executives, many of whom have never told their stories before. Spread over three volumes, They Create Worlds focuses on the creative designers, shrewd marketers, and innovative companies that have shaped video games from their earliest days as a novelty attraction to their current status as the most important entertainment medium of the 21st Century. The books examine the formation of the video game industry in a clear narrative style that will make them useful as teaching aids in classes on the history of game design and economics, but they are not being written specifically as instructional books and can be enjoyed by anyone with a passion for video game history.

Responding to the rapidly changing business landscape (including advances in social media and information technology) and the COVID-19 pandemic where customers, visitors, or tourists have become more connected, accessible, and informed than ever before, many brands and firms are investing in brand management and brand co-creation. This new volume provides an enlightening perspective on brand co-creation, brand management, and branding through contemporary conceptual discussions and empirical research studies from thought leaders. Providing a step-by-step guide to the brand co-creation and branding process in the hospitality and tourism industry, the volume identifies cutting-edge measurements, strategies, and metrics for capturing and measuring brand co-creation and highlights best practices in implementing brand management marketing strategies. Starting with a basic understanding of brand (value) co-creation, the volume then explores deeper by defining the concept, describing the ways to measure it, and providing several strategies to capitalize on it. The authors emphasize the interrelationship of these concepts and how they manage brand co-creation. The book illustrates the concepts with examples from around the globe. Topics cover the impact of social media on brand co-creation during the COVID-19 outbreak in the tourism industry, co-branding emerging tourist destinations, analysis of the content of hotel websites, creating better customer value, brand co-creation in e-sports gaming events, post-COVID-19 educational tourism, and more. The volume also presents a chapter on the state-ofthe-art role of augmented reality and virtual reality in improving the customer experience. A synthesis of a decade-long effort in brand co-creation, the book will be valuable to academics, practitioners, consultants, destination management organizations (DMOs), and managers looking to improve brand co-creation pre-, during-, and post-pandemics.

Level design connects the player to the game through challenges, experiences, and emotions. This book is an invaluable introduction to the evolving practices of Level Designers across the games industry. The increasingly complex role of the Level Designer requires technical and creative skill as it brings together architecture, art, player psychology, interaction design, usability, and experience design. This book explores in detail the principles designers employ when planning levels and building engaging spaces for the player. As well as practical approaches to level design, the book delves into the theoretical underpinnings of the processes and charts a path towards thinking like a Level Designer. Throughout the book you will be guided through the fundamentals of level design: each chapter builds on the types of research, ideation, best practices, and methodologies Level Designers employ when creating prototypes and shipped games. A series of interviews with designers and case studies from game studios examine the application of industry-wide expertise used to create triple-A and indie game titles. By the end of this book you will have gained valuable insight into the role of a Level Designer and be able to devise, plan, and build your own engaging and entertaining game levels.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 16th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, EC-TEL 2021, held in Bolzano, Italy, in September 2021. The 21 research full papers and 28 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 98 submissions. The European Conference on Technology-Enhance Learning, is committed to address global challenges and quality education. The papers deal with the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 4 and SDG 10, to help to reduce the existing gaps and inequalities between countries and regions from around the world in terms of inclusiveness, equity, access, and quality of education.

Today, consumers of video games spend over $22.4 billion each year; using more complex and multi-layered strategies, game developers attempt to extend the profitability of their products from a simple one-time sale, to continuous engagement with the consumer. The Evolution and Social Impact of Video Game Economics examines paradigmatic changes in the economic structure of the video game industry from a media effects and game design perspective. This book explores how game developers have changed how they engage players in order to facilitate continuous financial transactions. Contributors look from the advent of microtransactions and downloadable content (DLCs) to the impact of planned obsolescence, impulse buying, and emotional control. This collection takes a broad view of the game dynamics and market forces that drive the video game industry, and features international contributors from Asia, Europe, and Australia.

Video games have become an increasingly ubiquitous part of society due to the proliferation and use of mobile devices. Video Games and Creativity explores research on the relationship between video games and creativity with regard to play, learning, and game design. It answers such questions as: - Can video games be used to develop or enhance creativity? - Is there a place for video games in the classroom? - What types of creativity are needed to develop video games? While video games can be sources of entertainment, the role of video games in the classroom has emerged as an important component of improving the education system. The research and development of game-based learning has revealed the power of using games to teach and promote learning. In parallel, the role and importance of creativity in everyday life has been identified as a requisite skill for success. - Summarizes research relating to creativity and video games - Incorporates creativity research on both game design and game play - Discusses physical design, game mechanics, coding, and more - Investigates how video games may encourage creative problem solving - Highlights applications of video games for educational purposes

Videogames and Agency explores the trend in videogames and their marketing to offer a player higher volumes, or even more distinct kinds, of player freedom. The book offers a new conceptual framework that helps us understand how this freedom to act is discussed by designers, and how that in turn reflects in their design principles. What can we learn from existing theories around agency? How do paratextual materials reflect design intention with regards to what the player can and cannot do in a videogame? How does game design shape the possibility space for player action? Through these questions and selected case studies that include AAA and independent games alike, the book presents a unique approach to studying agency that combines game design, game studies, and game developer discourse. By doing so, the book examines what discourses around player action, as well as a game’s design can reveal about the nature of agency and videogame aesthetics. This book will appeal to readers specifically interested in videogames, such as game studies scholars or game designers, but also to media studies students and media and screen studies scholars less familiar with digital games. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Video Game Design is a visual introduction to integrating core design essentials, such as critical analysis, mechanics and aesthetics, prototyping, level design, into game design. Using a raft of examples from a diverse range of leading international creatives and award-winning studios, this is a must-have guide for budding game designers. Industry perspectives from game industry professionals provide fascinating insights into this creative field, and each chapter concludes with a workshop project to help you put what you've learnt into practice to plan and develop your own games. With over 200 images from some of the best-selling, most creative games of the last 30 years, this is an essential introduction to industry practice, helping readers develop practical skills for video game creation. This book is for those seeking a career making video games as part of a studio, small team or as an independent creator. It will guide you from understanding how games engage, entertain and communicate with their audience and take you on a journey as a designer towards creating your own video game experiences. Interviewees include: James Portnow, CEO at Rainmaker Games Brandon Sheffield, Gamasutra.com/Game Developer magazine Steve Gaynor, co-founder The Fullbright Company (Gone Home) Kate Craig, Environment Artist. The Fullbright Company (Gone Home) Adam Saltsman, creator of Canabalt & Gravity Hook Jake Elliott & Tamas Kemenczy, Cardboard Computer (Kentucky Route Zero) Tyson Steele, User Interface Designer, Epic Games Tom Francis, Game Designer, Gunpoint & Floating Point Kareem Ettouney, Art Director, Media Molecule. Little Big Planet 1 & 2, Tearaway. Kenneth Young, Head of Audio, Media Molecule Rex Crowle, Creative Lead, Media Molecule