Meet the (media) producers: artists, composers, and gamemakers

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to detail the perceived influence of early gaming habits toward media production from seven students enrolled at a university in the Southeastern US. Participants identified as heavily involved in creating media such as anime, videos, fanfiction, webcomics, games, and digital music.

Design/methodology/approach

This exploratory study used qualitative research, thus data collection and analysis included questionnaires, interviews, and artifacts identifying and categorizing six main themes: game play preferences, persistence, early connections between game play and media, support and feedback, creations inspired by games, and significance of games in current lives.

Findings

The study found that most participants believed game play in childhood influenced increasingly complex media production habits. Six of the seven believed game play influenced their career path. The paper concludes with implications for education including games as conduits to personalized learning and career paths.

Originality/value

Results from this study extend prior research on the value of games to promote media production and meet personal and professional goals. This is significant as prior research linking early game play to media production influencing career goals is sparse.

Citation

Herro, D.C., Lin, L. and Fowler, M. (2017), "Meet the (media) producers: artists, composers, and gamemakers", Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 40-53. https://doi.org/10.1108/JARHE-04-2015-0029