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.
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adapted from Jarvenpaa and Tuunainen (2013)
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Jonasdottir, H. Innovation in Game Development: IT Enablement and Affordances on Kickstarter. Comput Game J 8, 65–81 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40869-018-0075-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40869-018-0075-6