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Published in:
2013 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
The Role of the Consumer: From Sales to Co-production
Authors : Peter Zackariasson, Timothy L. Wilson
Published in: Changing the Rules of the Game
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK
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In 2012 Tim Schafer raised more than $1 million in less than 24 hours towards his next video game development - not from a big-name publisher, but from fans alerted to the project on Twitter and Facebook (Snider, 2012). Reflecting on this rapid response, industry analyst Wanda Meloni commented: ‘I think there is a growing pent-up demand for really good, creatively designed games that aren’t coming out of the big publishers’ (Snider, 2012: 5B). This development signals a full circle return of the importance of the consumer in video game development. In the initial stages of the industry developers and consumers were peers - individuals programming computers for their own entertainment. As commercial interests grew, users became the targets for sales and thus the indirect sponsors of development. Now, as Tim Schafer’s experience shows, they are becoming more directly involved in the financing of games. Always, however, it was the consumer who both provided and was a user of value in these games.