Dissertation Improvement Grant: Videogaming, Work, and the Play of the New Economy

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY

Investigators

Abstract

This Science and Society Dissertation Improvement Grant examines the diverse forces and activities, namely, laws, technologies, collaboration, and workplace cultures, that shape console video game development, and make it tenable in today's globalized economy. This study uses video game developers and video game development in the United States and India as a window into understanding these complex issues. The ways in which game companies work both literally and figuratively, organize work, and the market forces surrounding them offers an opportunity to rethink ideas about the new economy. NSF funding supports data collection through participant observation, supplemented by interviews, internal documentation, practices, and protocols. The second data set is based on patent documents and legal cases, which will serve to further illuminate the technological practices and those developments, which are valued or perceived unique enough to pursue a patent. The final data sources are press releases and SEC filings, which offer information about the corporate actions of companies and the kinds of events that are publicized. Cross cultural analysis between the United States and India provides an opportunity to see these forces and activities unfolding between one of the most well established game industries, and another newly emerging. The hypothesis that will be tested by this research is: the idea that there are distinguishing elements of work in the new economy, from post-industrial work, and that play has emerged as a useful distinguishing core category. The intellectual merit of this research is the contribution of the notion of play at three differing levels of analysis, work, work organization, and market and cultural dynamics of the new economy. The broad impact of this research stems from insights for policy makers regarding issues of work outsourcing, immigration of workers, patent law, business regulation, and the regulation of media ratings systems.