ABSTRACT

In today’s hypercompetitive market, companies are forced to be creative and innovate in order to survive. Digital technology has brought new possibilities for organisations as well as enabled thousands of start-ups to enter the marketplace. However, the constant flood of start-ups leads to intense competition increasing pressure on the companies to innovate. Developing novel ideas and bringing them to fruition is often a chaotic process influenced by pressure and uncertainty. The concept of creativity in information systems (IS) development and digital innovation has been under-researched with a too-narrow focus. This thesis aims to extend research on digital innovation and creativity and the interaction between human actors and digital technology during this process in a high-pressure environment. A case study of game development start-up companies in the Norwegian video game industry was conducted to gain empirical insight into the work situation of a high-pressure environment with creative and technologically savvy developers. A new theoretical process model is presented, as well as propositions to guide practitioners in their creative endeavours.

ABSTRACT

Digital technology provides opportunities for new product development and innovation through affordances. However, in digital innovation, human actors are constrained by the design of technology and its interaction with different aspects of the socio-technical context. In this article, we investigate the relationship between digital technology and developers in a video game development company and its role in supporting and hindering digital innovation. We build on theory of affordances and constraints in answering the research question: How does the actualization of affordances in video game development influence the innovation process and outcome? Based on empirical analysis, we identify four affordances: Tool development, prototyping, user testing, and patching. We theorize affordance actualization and distinguish between innovation outcome and process innovation affordances. Furthermore, we theorize the dependencies between human actors, the organization, and technology in the affordance actualization process and mechanism.

ABSTRACT

This paper reviews literature on soft innovation with a focus on soft innovation in the video game industry. A systematic review of books, reports and papers, in all 39 literary works form the bases of this paper. Four streams were identified from the literature - management, design, market and network. Based on the findings some key insights were made. The need for a holistic view of hard and soft innovation is necessary, the product becomes valuable only through experience, the market pressure increases the need for soft innovation, and networking increases knowledge, which generates intangible and tangible value.

ABSTRACT

The rise of social media platforms has changed the nature of interactions between computer games companies and players. Computer games companies have greater access to information on their needs and wants as they share information and engage with players in the development process. The purpose of this paper is to highlight how crowd-funding social media platforms, in this case Kickstarter, can enable computer games companies and players to produce and utilize knowledge that can facilitate the game development process. In this paper, the Pöppelbuß and Malsbender conceptual framework and the IT enablement model by Jarvenpaa and Tuunainen are combined in order to evaluate how computer games companies can interact with players and accelerate games development using Kickstarter. The results show that Kickstarter is a useful platform for gaining access to a dedicated user base willing to share their knowledge. Kickstarter enables companies to build strong relationships with their backers via the processes of informing, responding and promoting response. Kickstarter helps to integrate the role of the games company with that of the users by enabling both parties to engage actively with each other, rather than the games company taking a passive role of simply gathering feedback from players.

ABSTRACT

The video game industry is in the forefront of technology development, which is also the case of the game industry developers. Their work requires a high level of creativity as well as technological savvy. However, working in small start-up companies also includes a great deal of worrying and even anxiety, and we know little about how these feelings influence creativity. We investigate this research question, how do top video game developers exploit worry and anxiety in their creative process? Our empirical approach was a qualitative exploratory study of six video game companies and start-ups. To develop our argument, we build on the concept of anxiety, as developed by Kierkegaard and May. Our conclusion is that the particular existential situation of game developer start-ups, which are characterized by uncertainty and strong financial pressures, triggers worry and anxiety. We show in detail, somewhat surprisingly, how game developers were able to exploit even anxiety to devise creative technical solutions.