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Placing Value on Community Co-creations: A Study of a Video Game 'Modding' Community

Published: 25 February 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Firms developing software -- and in particular, video game producers - seek to leverage the community of users/developers in enhancing product offering and increasing sales. Despite the practical importance of this phenomena, to date little research has investigated the actual value such communities add aside from few qualitative case studies of successful synergies between commercial enterprises and open-source communities. The objective of this study is to try and quantitatively assess the effectiveness of firms' efforts to increase sales of their product through inducing community's co-creation activity. Our empirical investigation focuses on producers of video games and their user/developer 'modding' community. An analysis of 45 games reveals that when firms are successful at engaging the community, the value added by the modding community contributes to an increase in sales of the base product. Implications for research on open innovation and for practitioners are discussed.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CSCW '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
    February 2017
    2556 pages
    ISBN:9781450343350
    DOI:10.1145/2998181
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Publication History

    Published: 25 February 2017

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    Author Tags

    1. digital culture
    2. game development
    3. game modding
    4. open innovation
    5. software development

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    February 25 - March 1, 2017
    Oregon, Portland, USA

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    CSCW '17 Paper Acceptance Rate 183 of 530 submissions, 35%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 2,235 of 8,521 submissions, 26%

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    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)Adopting Third-party Bots for Managing Online CommunitiesProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36537078:CSCW1(1-26)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
    • (2024)The Ecology of Harmful Design: Risk and Safety of Game Making on a Metaverse PlatformProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3660678(1842-1856)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
    • (2024)Who Makes Popular Content? Information Cues from Content Creators for Users’ game Choice: Focusing on User-Created Content Platform “Roblox”Entertainment Computing10.1016/j.entcom.2024.10069750(100697)Online publication date: May-2024
    • (2023)The ethical dilemma of modding digital games: A literature review of the creation and distribution of modsConvergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies10.1177/1354856523122393330:2(860-881)Online publication date: 21-Dec-2023
    • (2023)Creative Console: A Player-Driven Game Based on a Modular Fast-Evolving-and-Verifying FrameworkProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36110507:CHI PLAY(803-832)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
    • (2023)A novel gray FUCOM method and its application for better video games experiencesExpert Systems with Applications10.1016/j.eswa.2023.121041234(121041)Online publication date: Dec-2023
    • (2023)Using a Service Lens to Better Understand Practices –and Vice VersaComputer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)10.1007/s10606-023-09478-333:3(499-551)Online publication date: 19-Aug-2023
    • (2022)Reporting on the project development practices of total conversion game mod teamsCreative Industries Journal10.1080/17510694.2022.2077590(1-23)Online publication date: 20-May-2022
    • (2021)Consumer engagement in value co-creation within virtual video game communitiesManagement & Marketing. Challenges for the Knowledge Society10.2478/mmcks-2021-002216:4(370-386)Online publication date: 30-Dec-2021
    • (2021)Players as Prosumers - How Customer Engagement in Game Modding May Benefit Computer Game MarketCentral European Business Review10.18267/j.cebr.26110:1(77-97)Online publication date: 19-Mar-2021
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