One Up : : Creativity, Competition, and the Global Business of Video Games / / Joost van Dreunen.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Columbia University Press Complete eBook-Package 2020
• VerfasserIn: van Dreunen, Joost,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Columbia University Press, , [2020]; ©2020
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource :; 39 figures, 23 tables

What explains the massive worldwide success of video games such as Fortnite, Minecraft, and Pokémon Go? Game companies look unconventional—and are often ignored—from the standpoint of traditional business strategy. Yet they have thrived in the face of digitalization, generating billions in revenue through business models such as offering content for free in order to build market share and draw in customers.One Up offers a pioneering empirical analysis of innovation and strategy in the video games industry to explain how it has gone from the fringe to the mainstream. Drawing on almost twenty years of practical and academic experience in the interactive entertainment field, Joost van Dreunen analyzes how business model innovation has made the video game industry what it is today. Covering more than three decades of industry data, he demonstrates that video game companies flourish when they bring the same level of creativity to business strategy as they do to game design. Filled with case studies of companies such as Activision Blizzard, Apple, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, Microsoft, Nexon, Sony, Take-Two Interactive, Tencent, and Valve, this book reveals how the emergence of digital and mobile gaming can make us rethink traditional product-based strategies. One Up is required reading for investors, strategic decision makers, creatives, and anyone looking to learn about the major drivers of change and growth in contemporary entertainment.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- PART 1 GAMES AS A PRODUCT -- 1 Digitalization of Interactive Entertainment -- 2 Games Industry Basics -- 3 Empire on the Edge of the Volcano -- PART 2 GAMES AS A SERVICE -- 4 Everyone Is a Gamer Now -- 5 Myth of the Mobile Millionaire -- 6 Greatly Exaggerated Death of the Console -- 7 Glorious Return of PC Gaming -- PART 3 GAMES AS MEDIA -- 8 Epic Quest for Intellectual Property -- 9 Watching Other People Play Video Games, and Why -- 10 Next-Gen Revenue Models -- Conclusion -- Appendix: Empirical Procedure -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index