3/17/2023 0 Comments Playwatch pictures overwatch![]() Accounts of game industry practices have been at the forefront of efforts within media studies to document and theorize conditions and transformations of labor under digital capitalism. This article introduces a special issue critically investigating contemporary formations of digital game labor, with a focus on the political-economic forces, social inequalities, and technological dynamics mutually shaping these formations. Ultimately, it is argued that platform capture demonstrates how platform owners leverage power asymmetries over dependents to aid in their platform’s technical evolution. Two, by considering how the first-party donation tool Twitch Bits has gradually challenged the dominance of the third-party tools that preceded it, this article theorizes the notion of platform capture, a critical rereading of platform envelopment, a popular concept in business studies. ![]() It is argued that this history traces the complex and co-productive interactions between Twitch as a sociotechnical architecture and a political economy. ![]() One, this article expands the empirical record regarding Twitch by chronicling the role of viewer donations in livestreaming since 2010, as well as the many tools that have facilitated this practice. Two contributions to research on the platformization of cultural production are made. In particular, it details the technical and economic contexts that led to the development of Twitch Bits, a first-party donation management service introduced in 2016. This article considers the history of donation management tools on the livestreaming platform Twitch. Since new motivations for productivity are proposed, this view informs research about fandom and productivity in current media culture in general. By exploring various ways in which players of computer games take part in the production of the games they play, the essay discusses games as an excellent example of a participatory culture because of the blurring of professional and hobbyist productivity in games. The essay aims to illustrate that we should look for alternative manifestations of fandom among players, those not solely based on productivity. Such mapping reveals limitations in views that consider fandom predominantly as productivity or approach player coproductivity straightforwardly as fandom. This essay discusses the productive practices surrounding computer games, proposing five dimensions of player productivity: (1) game play as productivity (2) productivity for play: instrumental productivity (3) productivity beyond play: expressive productivity (4) games as tools and (5) productivity as a part of game play. Depending on the game, genre, and playing style, the player is either expected or encouraged to create game content and game-related texts of her own. As a result of its unique characteristics as a technology and a medium, a computer game engages its players with several novel forms of coproductivity, such as modding, the making of machinima videos, and the writing of game play walkthroughs.
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