The Political Economy of the 7Th Generation Console Game David B

Vol. 8, No. 1 (2014) http://www.eludamos.org Prolonging the Magic: The political economy of the 7th generation console game David B. Nieborg Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture. 2014; 8 (1), pp. 47-63 Prolonging the Magic: The political economy of the 7th generation console game DAVID B. NIEBORG In the summer of 2008, the seventh generation of video game consoles was in full swing. During that year’s E3 Media and Business Summit, the game industry's annual game trade show and a major marketing event, a gleeful Don Mattrick took the stage to outline the Xbox 360 strategy for the years to come. “[Welcome] to Xbox 360”, Microsoft's Senior Vice President opened the press conference, “home of the biggest blockbusters and home to fun and entertainment for everyone. […] Big franchises are a mainstay of our industry. And the biggest sellers are on Xbox 360” (Nicholas 2008). Mattrick’s opening statement neatly summarizes the core tenets of the publishing strategy pursued by Microsoft. Above all, his statement singles out the importance of the blockbuster, a term generally associated with post-classical Hollywood movies (cf. Cucco 2009, Stringer 2003). Drawing on the concept of the blockbuster makes sense because the game industry’s console segment compares well with the hit- driven nature of large parts of the movie industry. Both rely heavily on high-risk, high- return productions that have “high production and marketing costs” (Egenfeldt Nielsen et al. 2008, p.17; cf. Rifkin 2000, p.199). In addition, both share a mode of production and circulation that can be characterized as rationalized and technology- driven (Tschang 2005, Tschang & Szczypula 2006). Apart from highlighting the scope and scale of blockbuster productions, Mattrick emphasizes the importance of “big franchises.” Five action-themed titles in particular were singled out during the trade show: Halo 3 (Bungie Studios 2007), Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Infinity Ward and Treyarch 2007), Bioshock (Irrational Games and Digital Extremes 2007), and Assassin's Creed (Ubisoft Montreal 2007), all released during the 2007 holiday season, along with Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar North), released April 2008. These titles illustrate well how the franchising strategy—that is, the serialization of discrete game titles, or what Denson and Jahn-Sudmann (2013) label “inter-ludic seriality”—dominates video game publishing. Three of these titles are the third and fourth installments in a series, whereas Bioshock and Assassin's Creed are positioned as “franchise starters,” launched early in the console cycle to establish new series. While blockbuster economics and the logic of serialization are not exclusive to the game industry, what does differentiate video game publishing from other sectors in the cultural industries is the cyclical introduction of standardized hardware platforms, typically every five to seven years (Schilling 2003). From the introduction of the Magnavox Odyssey (1972) onwards, the console market segment has been economically driven and technologically structured by a series of hardware cycles. Apart from changes in game technology, every consecutive console cycle is a moment of disruption and marks a shift in gamer discourse, institutional practices, as Eludamos Vol. 8, No. 1 (2014) pp. 47-63 Copyright © by David B. Nieborg 48 Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture • Vol. 8, No. 1 (2014) well as the form and format of the blockbuster video game (cf. Bissell 2010, Chatfield 2011, pp.27-38, Dymek 2010). The most recent cycle would be the eight generation of hardware initiated by the Wii U (2012) and complemented by the Xbox One (2013) and Playstation 4 (2013). Of particular interest to the argument in this paper is the era of the Xbox 360 (2005) and the Playstation 3 (2006). Together with the Wii these machines started the seventh console cycle, sometimes referred to as the high-definition (HD) cycle.1 Compared to previous cycles, what defines the seventh generation is the networked nature of the hardware, combined with a leap in storage and computational capabilities, allowing for higher resolution images and thus more (photo)realistic video. The advent of the seventh cycle should be seen against the background of a number of transformations in the wider cultural industries (cf. Jenkins 2006, Lessig 2008, Rifkin 2000). Similar to other sectors, the game industry is in a transitional phase moving from a physical, or packaged goods industry (i.e. selling boxes in retail stores) towards an on-demand circulation model based on digital distribution (Broekhuizen et al. 2013). Whereas big franchises are indeed “the mainstay” of the console segment, as Mattrick put it, what he did not explicitly allude to in his introduction is the fact that the seventh generation is specifically positioned to generate additional revenue beyond traditional retail sales. What has become a novel publishing strategy for blockbuster or “Triple-A” franchises is the digital distribution of game extensions that expand on the original stand-alone game via paid-for content in order to keep gamers engaged and to have the “disc remain fresh.” In this sense, the seventh generation blockbuster game is a hybrid product, signaling the mixture of physical and digital circulation mechanisms. To be sure, adding post-launch content to a physically distributed game predates the seventh generation. A decade ago game publishers released so-called expansion packs—a format best understood as a self-contained retail addition to a stand-alone game—for PC-based franchises such as The Sims (2000) or Battlefield (2002). Yet, I would contend that what sets the post-launch publishing strategy for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 apart from previous generations is the ubiquity and institutional integration of paid-for downloadable content (PDLC or DLC) for virtually all titles. The goal of this paper, then, is to critically engage with the seventh generation blockbuster console game, specifically by drawing on political economic theory. Blockbuster games are a significant part of contemporary game culture and popular objects played by tens of millions of gamers, but also rarely theorized artifacts. It must be noted that instead of blockbuster games, gamers, critics, as well as industry professionals more often speak of “Triple-A” games. The select number of transnational console game publishers, such as Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, and Activision Blizzard, that publish Triple-A games, typically categorize them as “packaged goods”—stand-alone, disc-based titles sold primarily via retail outlets. Rather than discussing seriality vis-à-vis a Triple-A games’ “aesthetic-formal” qualities (Denson and Jahn-Sudmann 2013), the Triple-A game will be theorized here as a cultural commodity. I will argue that understanding contemporary console games inherently means investigating game technology as well as realizing that the Triple-A game is always also a cultural product and cannot therefore be fully understood without acknowledging and unpacking its commodity form.2 In other Nieborg • Prolonging the Magic 49 words, retracing the process of commodification—the process by which a cultural product’s use value is transformed into exchange value (cf. Mosco 2009, p.132)— gives us an approach suited to studying what kind of Triple-A games are made, under what conditions, and how they are circulated. The core of my argument is that the Triple-A game is neither simply a discrete cultural commodity, nor just a mere object of play, but is best understood as an incremental and seemingly infinite stream of renewable gaming experiences. Furthermore, the Triple-A game in its commodity form functions fully inside a capitalist framework, and it is hence tied into a specific production and circulation logic. A techno-economic logic A console game's platform-dependent nature invites questions concerning the interaction between the technological properties of proprietary game hardware and the publishing strategies of industrial actors. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the political economy of franchising, I will first discuss how the Triple-A console game is afforded and constrained by game hardware. Does the networked mode of circulation alter our understanding of the Triple-A commodity form? In the second part of this paper I argue that the transformation of culture into commodities leads to a particular codification of culture, and as a result the Triple-A game adheres to a particular logic of cultural production, circulation, and consumption. Drawing on Bill Ryan's work on the sociology of capitalist cultural production, attention is drawn to the argument that the Triple-A commodity form acts as a “system of control,” steering game publishers and developers “towards repetition of the particular cultural forms in which companies have invested” (1991, p.178). The third and last part will then offer a case study of the seventh generation installments of the Call of Duty franchise to illustrate how publisher Activision Blizzard aims to rationalize game production and circulation. The Call of Duty series shows that the Triple-A game has transformed from a stand alone, singular artifact into a perpetually extended, more open-ended commodity type that corresponds with a particular “system of control,” combining the franchising publishing strategy with digitally distributed game extensions. The console game's platform-dependent nature enforces what one might call a platform-specific modality of production and circulation. Montfort

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