HEIKKI TYNI GameV Crowdfunding as a Form of Platformised Cultural Production (ႇHFWVRQ3URGXFWLRQ5HFHSWLRQDQG&LUFXODWLRQ Tampere University Dissertations 337 Tampere University Dissertations 337 HEIKKI TYNI GameV Crowdfunding as a Form of Platformised Cultural Production Effects on Production, Reception and Circulation ACADEMIC DISSERTATION To be presented, with the permission of the Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences of Tampere University, for public discussion on 13th of November 2020, at 16 o’clock. ACADEMIC DISSERTATION Tampere University, Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences Finland Responsible Associate Professor supervisor and Olli Sotamaa Custos Tampere University Finland Pre-examiners Professor Mia Consalvo PhD Anthony Smith Concordia University University of Salford Canada United Kingdom Opponent Assistant Professor, PhD David B. Nieborg University of Toronto Canada The originality of this thesis has been checked using the Turnitin OriginalityCheck service. Copyright ©2020 author Cover design: Roihu Inc. ISBN 978-952-03-1756-0 (painettu) ISBN 978-952-03-1757-7 (verkkojulkaisu) ISSN 2489-9860 (painettu) ISSN 2490-0028 (verkkojulkaisu) http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-03-1757-7 PunaMusta Oy – Yliopistopaino Vantaa 2020 Games Crowdfunding as a Form of Platformised Cultural Production: Effects on Production, Reception and Circulation Heikki Tyni Islalle, Saimille ja Marja-Kaisalle iii iv PREFACE This dissertation work has been a long journey into global game industry practices, games crowdfunding and backer communities with their various motivations. What started out with a three-year research funding from the University of Tampere Doctoral School has taken over five years of my life. Doing research can be awfully lonely at times, something that has become even more evident during the COVID- 19 pandemic and social distancing. For many of us, including me, this has presented a lot of challenges in how we are able to organise our work and ourselves in the absence of physical work communities. As such, this work has been a long personal journey into how research work is practiced, a process that will no doubt continue for a long time after writing this. I have played digital games since the age of six. Since the age of 13 I have been interested in the creation processes of cultural work, first by creating myself and then by analysing others create. At the age of twenty, I was drawn to filmmaking, and my journey led me to study audio-visual media culture in the University of Lapland. For multiple reasons, my studies concentrated on participatory cultures in digital gaming. When researching the background for my bachelor’s thesis, I started to bump into names like Frans Mäyrä, Olli Sotamaa and Annakaisa Kultima who seemed to be the top game scholars in Finland, stationed at Tampere Game Research Lab. I then moved to Tampere to study in a master’s programme in game studies, and would you believe my luck: almost immediately, I was able to start working with these top scientists. After working here at Tampere for more than a decade, some of that magic still lingers here in these hallowed halls of game research. I first grew interested in games crowdfunding around 2014, when more and more independent game projects started to seek project funding through Kickstarter. For a short while, it seemed like these player-funded projects could really make a difference in the global game console industry. This was a time when Nintendo’s Wii U console, launched two year earlier, was failing badly against Sony’s and Microsoft’s consoles, largely because most large-scale game productions by third-party publishers were avoiding the console. Suddenly, however, it seemed like many games crowdfunding projects would support the Wii U to a degree that the machine would actually have some new games to play. This seemed like a turn that signalled a v revolution in terms of how the traditional game industry had worked for decades. This kind of potential for industry transformation informed the first stages of my research on games crowdfunding. In the end, crowdfunding did not save the Wii U, but my research interest had already drifted to other phenomena within games crowdfunding: the dynamic relationships between the campaigns and the backer communities, how developers were able to manage (or not) the long development period leading up to the launch, the connections between games crowdfunding and game collecting cultures, and so on. Games crowdfunding is still a burgeoning phenomenon that keeps on leading an interested researcher into all kinds of alley ways and underground lairs. Indeed, there seem to be princesses in almost all the castles. For helping me make this dissertation a reality, I want to specifically mention a few people. First and foremost, I want to thank my instructor Professor Olli Sotamaa. His wisdom, guidance and patience during my long research process has been more or less vital in getting me across the finish line. During my decade+ stay at Game Research Lab, Olli has constantly supported me both as a teacher and a colleague, and also as a friend, in a way that has meant the world to me. I also thank him for co-writing several articles with me along our shared path in researching game production, one of which forms a part of this dissertation. Special thanks go to Professor Mia Consalvo and Dr. Anthony Smith for pre- examining the dissertation and for their supportive and insightful comments. I also want to extend special thanks to Professor David Nieborg both for his inspiring research over the years and for agreeing to be my esteemed opponent. Other important collaborators and colleagues that hold a direct significance for my work include Juho Hamari for our writing partnership on one of the included articles and for teaching me a lot about quantitative research; Frans Mäyrä both for his wise guidance over the years and his leadership within Game Research Lab; J. Tuomas Harviainen for his kind help in general and specifically in regards to article publishing and the doctoral process; Kati Alha for her kind help in all work things imaginable, and for being secretly the real bedrock of Game Research Lab over the years; and Jan Švelch for his friendship and collaboration in teaching and research on the topic of game production. I am also deeply grateful for Tom Apperley both for his professional support and his friendship in and out of work during these last two years. Tom also deserves my gratitude for kickstarting the Write Club. Without this shared space a lot of hard work and good conversations between colleagues simply would not have happened. Consequently, I thank the entire Write Club community for camaraderie and vi support, including the “regulars”, Elina, Niklas and Kati, and also the more casual participants like Usva, Jaakko, Sabine, Mila and others. I also thank all the other colleagues now working at Game Research Lab, or who have passed through the Lab over the years: thank you for all our collaborations, for all the support and the good conversations. Outside the academia, there are a number of people who have had a special significance on my thinking over the years, and it would be impossible to name all of them here. Thank you all, you know who you are. I do, however, want to specifically thank Pasi for his lifelong friendship and all the conversations that always seem to stretch longer and longer, going back all the way to Rantsu; Antti for his friendship and camaraderie during the all the ups and downs during my time at Tampere; and both Hannu and Raimo for always being there when I needed it, filled with seemingly endless understanding and wisdom. During the time that it has taken to complete this work, I have been funded by the Tampere University Doctoral School, and employed by the Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies funded by Academy of Finland. I am very thankful for this support. Lastly I want to thank my family: my mom Liisa and my sister Maria for being the biggest inspirations in my life; my daughters, Isla and Saimi, the lights of my life, for teaching me so much about myself; and my wife, Marja-Kaisa, for the love, patience and endless support in all areas of my life. vii viii ABSTRACT The recent decade has seen an increasing number of ‘game production studies’, with critical examinations on industry structures, production models and labour issues. This study critically examines an emerging area of independent production of digital games, games crowdfunding. Asking funding directly from ‘backer’ audiences, game developers have been able to sidestep the publishers of the traditional game industry. However, crowdfunding has had a myriad of repercussions for everyday game work, production networks, and how games are received and sold, amongst other things. Through a mixed-methods approach combining elements from game studies, critical political economy and cultural studies, this dissertation conceptualises games crowdfunding as a production logic that affects every area of game production. In getting rid of the traditional publisher, developers need to acquire a lot of new competencies and shoulder a lot of work previously handled by the publishers. Backers are found to possess several other roles beyond just funding and hold a wide variety of participation motivations beyond just acquiring the crowdfunded game. As projects have become more professional, many backers treat crowdfunding as a form of pre-ordering. In the discussion, games crowdfunding is contextualised as a form ’platformisation of cultural production’, with game development and economics revolving around a central platform and intermediaries connected to it. The production model is revealed as a site of tension between alternative production opportunities, precarious game work, commercialisation and emerging user opportunities. Further studies are needed to understand the full gamut of games crowdfunding, including small campaigns.