scholarly journals Speculating on Steam: Consumption in the gamblified platform ecosystem

2021 ◽  
pp. 146954052199392
Author(s):  
Andrei Zanescu ◽  
Marc Lajeunesse ◽  
Martin French
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
Cultural Critique ◽  
Research Model ◽  
Steam Consumption ◽  
Consumer Studies ◽  
Model Combining ◽  
Legal Barriers

The rise of platforms as the premier model of videogame distribution has led to a number of changes in the business models of producers and distributors. Consumers are constantly hailed by games platforms through freemium business models that offer cosmetic items contained in loot boxes or recurring subscriptions. Thus far, game studies and consumer studies have been unable to account for the totality of how these new and dynamic platforms circumvent legal barriers and attract potential consumers. This paper argues that a hybrid research model combining platform studies, socio-cultural critique of gamblification, and political economy is required in order to theorize and explicate how these platforms operate. The platformized and gamblified model for game distribution seeks to regulate and configure networks of association between consumers and producers with the ultimate aim of eliciting participation on platforms.

scholarly journals Customers’ Intentions to Switch to Internet-Only Banks: Perspective of the Push-Pull-Mooring Model

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 8062
Author(s):  
Cheolho Yoon ◽  
Dongsup Lim
Keyword(s):  
Financial Services ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Internet Banking ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Research Model ◽  
Financial Industry ◽  
Banking Services ◽  
New Business

The advent of fintech is blowing a new wind into the financial industry. New business models have been created and consumers’ access to financial services is higher than ever. Internet-only banks based on advanced information technologies have emerged as a leader in the fintech industry, and these banks are fiercely competing with large banks using internet banking as a weapon to attract new customers. The purpose of this study is to explore the factors that influence customers’ intention to switch to internet-only banking services from traditional internet banking services in Korea. To this end, a research model was developed based on the push-pull-mooring model (PPM), which is a migration theory. The research model was analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings will provide the practitioners of the new internet-only bank with strategic guidance for attracting new customers and help practitioners of traditional banks to retain current customers.

Is Cancer Solvable? Towards Efficient and Ethical Biomedical Science

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 362-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff Shrager ◽  
Mark Shapiro ◽  
William Hoos
Keyword(s):  
Cancer Research ◽  
Clinical Research ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Information Gain ◽  
Biomedical Science ◽  
Global Information ◽  
Research Model ◽  
Model Combining ◽  
Treatment Analysis

Global Cumulative Treatment Analysis (GCTA) is a novel clinical research model combining expert knowledge, and treatment coordination based upon global information-gain, to treat every patient optimally while efficiently searching the vast space that is the realm of cancer research.

scholarly journals Distributing productive play: a materialist analysis of Steam

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Joseph
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Interaction Design ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sales Promotions ◽  
Historical Continuity ◽  
New Space ◽  
A Site

Valve Corporation’s digital game distribution platform, Steam, is the largest distributor of games on personal computers, analyzed here as a site where control over the production, design and use of digital games is established. Steam creates and exercises processes and techniques such as monopolization and enclosure over creative products, online labour, and exchange among game designers. Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding framework places communication at the centre of the political economy, here of digital commodities distributed and produced by online platforms like Steam. James Gibson’s affordance theory allows the market Steam’s owners create for its users to be cast in terms of visuality and interaction design. These theories are largely neglected in the existing literature in game studies, platform studies, and political economy, but they allow intervention in an ongoing debate concerning the ontological status of work and play as distinct, separate human activities by offering a specific focus on the political economy of visual or algorithmic communication. Three case studies then analyze Steam as a site where the slippage between game-play and work is constant and deepening. The first isolates three sales promotions on Steam as forms of work disguised as online shopping. The second is a discourse analysis of a crisis within the community of mod creators for the game Skyrim, triggered by changes implemented on Steam. The third case study critiques Valve Corporation’s positioning of Steam as a new space to extract value from play by demonstrating historical continuity with consumer monopolies. A concluding discussion argues Steam is a platform that evolves to meet distinct crises and problems in the production and circulation of its digital commodities as contradictions arise. Ultimately, Steam shows how the cycle of capital accumulation encourages monopolization and centralization.

Drift Contexts

Drift ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff Ferrell
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Broken Windows ◽  
Cultural Critique ◽  
Georg Simmel ◽  
Spatial Displacement ◽  
Techniques Of Neutralization ◽  
Urban Dynamics ◽  
Spatial Economy

This chapter develops a sociology of drift from the classic works of Robert Park, Georg Simmel, David Matza, Gresham Sykes, and others. It reconsiders Sykes and Matza’s “techniques of neutralization” model, arguing that it embodies a deeper sociological and cultural critique than that which is commonly attributed to it. The chapter then constructs a political economy and spatial economy of drift which locates drift within contemporary urban dynamics of “consumption-driven urban development,” spatial displacement, anti-homeless initiatives, risk-based and place-based policing, broken-windows policing, and CPTED. The chapter concludes by considering these dynamics in the context of spatial alienation and transgression.

scholarly journals The Political Economy of Cultural Memory in the Videogames Industry

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-84
Author(s):  
Emil Lundedal Hammar
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
Videogame Industry ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Game Developers

Abstract Following the materialist approaches to contemporary digital memory- making, this article explores how unequal access to memory production in videogames is determined along economic and cultural lines. Based on semi-structured qualitative interviews with different European, Asian and North American historical game developers, I make the case for how materialist and cultural aspects of videogame development reinforce existing mnemonic hegemony and in turn how this mnemonic hegemony determines access to the production of memory- making potentials that players of videogames activate and negotiate. My interview findings illustrate how individual workers do not necessarily intend to reproduce received systems of power and hegemony, and instead how certain cultural and material relations tacitly motivate and/or marginalise workers in the videogame industries to reproduce hegemonic power relations in cultural memory across race, class and gender. Finally, I develop the argument that access to cultural production networks such as the games industry constitutes important factors that need to be taken seriously in research on cultural memory and game studies. Thus, my article investigates global power relationships, political economy, colonial legacies and cultural hegemony within the videogame industry, and how these are instantiated in individual instances of game developers.

From outside the Imperium: Gandhi's Cultural Critique of the ‘West’

1981 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashis Nandy
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Critique ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The West ◽  
Equitable Distribution ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Shifting Baseline ◽  
Modern Nation State

Gandhi considered the cultural gap between the modern and the non-modern cultures deeper than that between the West and the East. It is the modern culture he rejected, not only as a social ideal, but also as a framework within which one could struggle for an equitable distribution of the products of modernity. Thus, to him, the demonic aspects of the modern Western culture did not centre around only the political economy of modernity, but also around modern West's scientific secularism, technologism, overorganization, ideologies of adulthood and masculinity, giganticism, stress on normality and oversocialization, and cultural evolutionism. Such a critique allowed Gandhi to see the West as a differentiated structure and the Western man as a co-victim of the oppression of the modern nation-state system, centralized economy, mass media and technocracy, and an ethic which was openly ethnocidal. Traditional cultures also were not undifferentiated to him. He was a critical traditionalist, not an uncritical defender of faiths, and he believed in ‘negative’ relativism, not in the anthropologist's version of cultural relativism. No culture could be perfect in his model, not even a traditional one; it could only be useful as a shifting baseline for cultural criticism.

scholarly journals Faktor-Faktor yang Memengaruhi Repurchase Intention pada Network Orchestrator X

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-56
Author(s):  
Tedy Tedy Tedy ◽  
Abu Bakar Adni ◽  
Aloysius Evan Kristian ◽  
Iqbal Asyarf Lufty ◽  
Muhammad Faried Romdolni
Keyword(s):  
Customer Satisfaction ◽  
Business Model ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Peer To Peer ◽  
Product Performance ◽  
Research Model ◽  
Repurchase Intention ◽  
Application System ◽  
Performance Risk

Abstract The development of peer-to-peer lodging begins with the presence of Airbnb in 2008 which is connected in 192 countries and served 60 million travelers worldwide. The presence of Airbnb has led to several similar business models, namely the network orchestrator. In Indonesia, network orchestrator x appeared in 2015 with a business model similar to a hotel, but assets in the form of buildings and their contents are owned by partners/third people. Network orchestrator x provides an application system integrated with a smartphone. In this study the questionnaire was distributed to 401 respondents and the number that could be used was 226 questionnaires. This research was conducted by adding two variables to the existing research model which is tangible and intangible variables. Based on the research, factors that significantly affect customer satisfaction are product performance risk, room and bathroom size, staff's helpfulness, accuracy of service, personal attention, and customer satisfaction also significantly influence repurchase intention.    

scholarly journals Digital Transformation for Sustainability: A Qualitative Analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Wail El hilali ◽  
Abdellah El Manouar ◽  
Mohammed Abdou Janati Idrissi
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Cloud Computing ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Digital Transformation ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Research Model ◽  
Four Dimensions ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Scarcity Of Resources

In the digital era, finding a new way to conduct business becomes mandatory. The risk of disruption, the bloody competition, the change in customer behaviours and the scarcity of resources, these are few of many drivers that force companies to change their business models and adapt to the new market reality. Digital transformation emerged as a recent concept that help companies to best leverage digital capabilities such as Big data, Internet of things, Cloud Computing and Artificial Intelligence. The purpose of this paper was to conduct a qualitative analysis on three big size companies in order to enrich the literature on this concept and to discuss whether or not companies could reach sustainability during their transformation journeys. The three in-depth case studies showed that customers, data, competition and innovation are four dimensions of digital transformation that have an impact on the companies’ sustainability actions. We proposed at the end of the article a future research model, composed of 5 hypotheses, to be validated by a future empirical study.

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