Other forms of crowdfunding require further investigations.
This research limits its findings to the effects of reward-based crowdfunding. This finding leads to the exploration of a new complex system of interactions between game developers and value chain stakeholders, and invokes the analysis of crowdfunding as a form of technological platform to identify and analyze new types of collaboration and competition. As an implementation of open innovation, crowdfunding unifies the channels that bring capital, technology and market knowledge from the crowd into the game. Through a multiple case design this research shows that the benefit of using crowdfunding goes well beyond fundraising. Specifically, it integrates the value chain logic with the platform logic to examine collaborative value creation enabled by opening up the business models of game developers to the crowd. This study contributes to understanding the effects of crowdfunding on the value creation process in the digital game industry. As projects turn to emerging production network intermediaries, their significance-as well as that of the crowdfunding backers-provides evidence to classify the crowdfunding model as a new game production logic. In removing the publisher as an “unnecessary” middleman, crowdfunded productions need to take care of the many tasks that used to belong to publishers, such as marketing, partner sourcing, distribution networks, and customer relationships. Two successfully crowdfunded case examples-Bloodstained (2018), a digital game, and Conan (2016), a board game-are used to illustrate changes crowdfunding causes in the traditional game production environment. Adopting a game production studies perspective, this article focuses on crowdfunding as a new channel for independent game development and the shifts crowdfunding causes in the game production network. I further open up a new dialogue about neoliberalism and sex workers by focusing on the neoliberal subject in this new form of sex work.Īs independent game makers strive to tackle the demands of game production without the help of a traditional publisher, a familiar game production environment has started to evolve. Here, these camgirls use neoliberal ideas to minimize the perception of danger of their work so that they can experience high levels of pleasure. My analysis focuses on how sex workers reconcile the pleasure in their work with the exploitation that is also found there. I argue that adult webcam models experience sexual and affectual pleasures in the course of their work and that they are able to experience these pleasures because the computer-mediated sexual exchange acts as a psychological barrier, and that the computer in turn becomes the primary tool that performers use for emotional management. I conduct content analyses of discussions on a popular online forum for webcam models to explore the themes of pleasure (erotic and affectual) and danger (capping, doxxing, and harassment) in adult webcam modeling. This article critically examines the ways in which entry into adult webcam modeling is facilitated by an expectation that sex work in cyberspace maximizes pleasure, primarily because it minimizes the risk of dangers associated with street-based sex work. The scholarly literature that has documented the use of the Internet by sex workers has focused almost entirely on prostitution and has yet to make adult webcam modeling a focal point of analysis. This article makes several important contributions to the burgeoning literature on sex work in a digital era. ² The current funding levels for both Patreon projects are considerably higher than when we began our sampling: since January 2020, the funding level for Summertime Saga has risen by 27.86%, while for Wild Life – An Adult RPG it has risen by 21.45%. While Wild Life – An Adult RPG (Adeptus Steve), which reportedly only had 9417 patrons as of 9 June 2021, receives a monthly income of $94,129 from those pledges. ¹ For example, Summertime Saga (Dark Cookie), the highest-ranked pornographic game, is third in terms of the number of funders, with 27,791 patrons funding $74,657 per month. Graphtreon’s ‘Top Patreon Creators’ list from 9 June 2021 includes six NSFW game projects among the top 50 projects (ranked by number of Patrons).
Recent research has indicated that, on average, more people (patrons) are funding pornographic digital games on Patreon than other (non-adult) digital games ( Lankoski & Dymek, 2020 ).
This article examines the prominent role of Patreon in the rapidly growing sector of crowdfunded pornographic games.
0 kommentar(er)
