It's all about games: enterprise and entrepreneurialism in digital games

• Published date: 01 March 2015
• Author: Adrian Wright
• Date: 01 March 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12042

It’s all about games: enterprise and

entrepreneurialism in digital games

Adrian Wright

This article aims to contrast benign notions of ‘free’ and

‘creative’ work in the context of labour market conditions and

employment relationships. Empirical research reveals the

exploitative and precarious nature of work in the experiences

of self-employed digital game developers and charts the

responses of developers to unstable and insecure working con-

ditions. Building on work by Pongratz and Voß, Haunschild

and Eikhof, and Bergvall-Kåreborn and Howcroft, this study

finds that a typical response to increasing instability in the

labour market is to adopt more enterprising and entrepreneur-

ial behaviour in order to find work. This article illustrates the

consequences for developers by highlighting examples of self-

exploitation, which is fuelled by a passion for work and is

where entrepreneurial practices lead to long working hours,

unpaid work and a blurring of work–life boundaries.

Keywords: digital games, enterprise, entrepreneuralism, labour

markets, creative industries, self-exploitation.

Introduction

Despite considerable published research on creative industries such as music, TV and

film, the digital games sector has been comparatively under-researched, even given

its growing symbolic and economic significance. Similar in economic size to the Hol-

lywood film industry (Zackariasson et al., 2006) the digital games sector is worth

$68.3 billion globally and around £2.9 billion to the UK economy (Euromonitor,

2014), with the UK constituting the third largest sector in the world (Skillset, 2011).

An exemplar of the symbolic significance of the industry is the console title Call of

Duty: Black Ops 2, which was the UK’s biggest selling entertainment release of 2012

(BBC News, 2013).

Despite the success of the digital games sector in the UK, it has been regarded as a

risky industry characterised by unstable macro conditions. Game firms have had to

adapt to major technological change impacting on product innovations and power

relations in the sector (Parkeret al., 2014), government U-turns and European Commis-

sion investigations over tax breaks (Keynote, 2014) and, in addition, the changing

demographic of users which has influenced consumption (Prato et al., 2010). Further-

more, instability exists in the labour market which is evidenced by employment sta-

tistics and the constitution and structure of firms. The number of developers working

in the sector in the UK declined to 7,000 in 2009 from an industry high of 9,400 in 2004

Adrian Wright (Awright2@uclan.ac.uk) is a Lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire and a

PhD candidateat Manchester Business School. Broadly,his research interests include work and employ-

ment in the creative industries and new work arrangements in the new economy.

New Technology, Work and Employment 30:1

ISSN 0268-1072

© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd32 New Technology, Work and Employment