Shift from game-as-a-product to game-as-a-service research trends

Excerpt

Over last two decades of development, digital games have beyond doubt come to be a major and prosperous industry. According to the statistics and estimation done by Statista company, the global gaming market will amount to 268.8 billion U.S. dollars annually in 2025, up from 178 billion U.S. dollars in 2021 [1]. The definition of games constantly evolves [2] and undergoes changes, not least due to the introduction of new enabling technologies. Historically the activity of play has been considered to be unproductive [3] as games redistribute assets of some kind between the players, as in gambling games, but the activity of play as such does not generate any new goods of any kind. This aspect of play and games has been disputed by Juul [4] amongst others. Digital games can produce in-game digital assets that in turn can be sold or traded among players which in turn has been banned by some game companies, considered to be cheating by players etc. [5]. In order to endow games with other purposes rather than pure entertainment, the concepts of serious games, simulation games, gamification, etc. have emerged for knowledge acquisition [6‐8], and they have been widely applied in education, well-being, training, advertisement, interpersonal communication, health care and other fields [9]. Games can also produce well-being and satisfaction for the players which are important factors in their own right. Hence, games are undoubtedly productive now. …