Global games : production, circulation and policy in the networked era / Aphra Kerr.

Machine generated contents note: Introduction — Digital Games as a Cultural Industry — Going Global — Production — Circulation — Going Local — Going Global? The Value, Structure and Geography of the Digital Games Industry — The Value of the Digital Games Industry — The Structure of the Digital Games Industry in the Networked Era — Key Trends in the Digital Games Industry, 2006–2016 — The Changing Geography of the Digital Games Industry — Summary — Production: Changing Production Logics, Organisations and Work/ers — Production Logics in the Cultural Industries — Production Logics in the Digital Games Industry — Transnational Cultural Production Networks and Lifecycles — Workers, Work and Labour in Digital Games Production — Summary — Circulation: Monitoring, Measuring and Adapting to Transnational Markets — Design and Metrics — Marketing and Metrics — Community Management — Localisation and Culturalisation — Player-Generated Content — Summary — Going Local: Space, Place and Policy for Global Games Production — Regional and National Institutions and Policies for Game Development — Cities, Clusters and Policies for Game Development — From Collectives to Communities of Practice — Legislative and Regulatory Institutions and Concerns — Summary — Conclusion — Digital Games as Cultural and Creative Industry — Networked Technology, Organisations and Individuals — Production Logics, Circulation and Work in the Digital Games Industry — Globality, Transnationalism and Spatialisation — Final Thoughts.

In the last decade our mobile phones have been infiltrated by angry birds, our computers by leagues of legends and our social networks by pleas for help down on the farm. As digital games have become networked, mobile and casual they have become a pervasive cultural form. Based on original empirical work, including interviews with workers, virtual ethnographies in online games and analysis of industry related documents, Global Games provides a political, economic and sociological analysis of the growth and restructuring of the digital games industry over the past decade. Situating the games industry as both cultural and creative and examining the relative growth of console, PC, online and mobile, Aphra Kerr analyses the core production logics in the industry, and the expansion of circulation processes as game services have developed. In an industry dominated by North American and Japanese companies, Kerr explores the recent success of companies from China and Europe, and the emergent spatial politics as countries, cities, companies and communities compete to reshape digital games in the networked age.