AN ECONOMIC AND GEOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF THE METAMORPHOSIS OF A DIGITALLY NATIVE INDUSTRY

Abstract

Over the last fifty years, the video game industry became one of the major and most dynamic segments of the media and entertainment sector. This industry not only achieved spectacular growth, its market structure has also been fundamentally transformed in a number of different dimensions: diversified games platforms (consoles, PCs, online and mobile games), various kind of games, diversity of players (size and demographics of the audience), respective roles of hardware and software, evolution of the main global companies and the geographic distribution of markets. In spite of this turbulence, the industry has continued to innovate in terms of creativity (content, types of games), technologies (devices and interfaces), as well as in terms of distribution and business models. The paper analyses the evolution of this industry from both a geographic and economic perspective and highlights the growing involvement of players as co-producers of games.