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The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of alcohol sponsorship-linked advertising through esports upon young gaming audiences and how gaming behaviours affect advertising response.

A cross-sectional survey study was employed to examine the prevalence and nature of alcohol advertising in esports, and the impact of esports participation upon young audiences' consumption and preferences concerning alcohol. Survey data were collected from 976 young Australian gamers aged between 16 and 34 years (58.9% male) using online questionnaires.

Results revealed a vulnerability to alcohol sponsorship and advertising among 25 to 34-year-old and heavy gamer cohorts. As predicted, heavy gamers were more receptive to alcohol advertising in terms of awareness, preference and consumption while gaming than casual gamers.

This research advances theories of consumer behaviour and advertising exposure situated in a new landscape of converging virtual and real experiential marketing. It also provides much-needed evidence to guide marketing strategy to the next-generation audiences and regulation of new and burgeoning digital platforms. Our research also highlights a need for policy to address the burgeoning, largely unregulated nature of online gaming.

This research provides the first empirical evidence of the impacts of alcohol-linked sponsorship in esports upon young playing and streaming audiences. It informs marketing strategy and policy in relation to the rapidly growing, potentially vulnerable online competitive gaming audience.

This paper aims to identify, analyze and discuss a potential new business opportunity that arises from the intersection of the digital music and game industries across borders throughout network-based innovation approach.

The research draws on review of industry and academic literature, two online surveys and interviews, overall encompassed by a interpretative exploratory research methodology strategy.

The study supports the interest and potential for developing new products that combine digital music and casual digital games and that draw on firms from more than one region, while potentially involving a wide set of social network key stakeholders.

This is an exploratory study in which findings should be challenged by confirmatory studies, including new product design and development of modeling techniques and network-based innovation approaches. This research contributes for the generation of new insights over technological and social driving forces, as well as emerging trends that shed light on the global competitiveness and on convergence of mobile gaming and digital music industries at regional innovation systems view. It also discusses spillover mechanisms based on new knowledge creation, knowledge diffusion and knowledge appropriation throughout the key stakeholders. The customer-centric innovation and network value autocorrelation hypothesis was validated, and both technology convergence and social factors are enhancement factors for innovation. Limitations and further research with larger sampling, specialization techniques and empirical modeling to in-depth analysis is suggested.

The study provides a framework for managers to develop new products that merges boundaries of related industries and encourages network-based innovation and cooperation between industry players, involving different regions. Ultimately, it shows opportunities of diversification, by introducing new products into new markets, as result of interdependence, soft factors, knowledge spillover and absorptive capacity mechanisms over a network of key stakeholders across different regions throughout customer-centric innovation, while impacting also new discussion on entrepreneurship and knowledge spillover theory and policy making.

Social capital network is key for innovation and knowledge spillover among industry players. Content creation regarding products and services show high dependence on spatial external cultural influences, tastes and habits for customer-centric innovation, while impacting on social and learning customer experience, as well.

The paper has value for product development and innovation managers, researchers and practitioners. It discusses the value of innovation systems that are purposively developed beyond traditional geographic and industry boundaries.

Narrative-driven, choice-based games, games that allow gamers to make decisions regarding the game characters and storylines, can bring forth emotional changes in their players and offer empathy during scenarios that a player may not experience in real-world situations. Therefore, they can be used as tools to help with gender nonconforming (GNC) individuals’ resilience regarding their gender identities. This study explores GNC peoples’ game-playing experiences with choice-based games, especially how such experiences help them gain resilience and shape their gender identities.

This study follows the classic phenomenological approach to understanding the experience of GNC gamers’ resilience experience from their own perspectives. In-depth interviews were conducted with 12 GNC participants, aged between 18 and 34. Each interview lasted 45–90 minutes. Interviews were transcribed and coded using NVivo R1. The essence of meanings was identified using themes and interpreted through qualitative analysis.

This paper identified six gender- and resilience-related common themes within GNC people’s gaming experiences, including 1) character creation: exploring gender identity through an avatar; 2) self-exploration and experimentation in games; 3) resonating experiences; 4) positive inclusive features in games; 5) storytelling and involving the player and 6) your actions have meaning.

The themes, patterns and game features identified in this study may provide insight into potential resilience-building activities for GNC people. They may inform digital mental health interventions, information services and game design practices.

Equity, inclusion and social justice have become a significant theme in today’s society. This study focuses on a marginalized community, GNC people and their mental health and resilience building. Results of the study will contribute to the understanding of this community and may inspire more intervention methods to help them cope with stress and difficult situations.

Research on gaming’s health benefits for the general population has been abundant, but studies about using games to help the LGBTQ+ community have been largely overlooked until recent years. Research on casual games’ mental benefits for LGBTQ+ people is particularly lacking. This research is one of the first in-depth, comprehensive investigations of GNC individuals’ resilience experiences with a particular type of casual video games, choice-based games. The phenomenological study offers rich description of gaming and gender identity exploration from gamers’ viewpoints.

Residing on social networking platforms, social games have unique characteristics distinguishing them from other digital games or online games. The purpose of this paper is to explore both social and gaming factors of social games and investigate their roles on enhancing perceived enjoyment. The authors also examine the relationships between perceived enjoyment, subject norm, perceived critical mass, intention to play, and actual behavior.

This paper develops a research model including nine hypotheses. Using a survey questionnaire, empirical data were collected from 169 actual social game players. Structured equation modeling was used to test the proposed research models.

Social identification, social interaction, and diversion significantly influence perceived enjoyment. Perceived enjoyment significantly influences the intention to play, which in turn significantly influences the actual behavior. Moreover, subject norm and perceived critical mass play different roles in determining the intention to play and the actual behavior.

The results of this study provide social game practitioners with a set of rich insights into guidelines on designing specific social and gaming characteristics to improve users’ perceived enjoyment and actual playing behavior.

Through analyzing characteristics of social games, The authors emphasize the difference between social games and other online games or computer games and recognize the enhancing role of social and gaming factors on perceived enjoyment. Findings of this study contribute to the literature on social games.

This work discusses gender issues related to the video game medium, addressing its production, consumption, and media repercussions. It begins with an overview of the emergence of the video game with the targeting of audiences that focused on sales campaigns to consumers along gendered lines that amplified the dominance of men in the space. The discussion then focuses on numerous ways that the gaming industry as a whole perpetuates a culture of misogyny. Empirical examples are provided of harassment, attacks, and the controversial event known as GamerGate. Subsequently, the complicated history of Brazilian video gaming development is presented to draw parallels with the development of the industry and the market in the United States. Finally, the chapter concludes with suggestions to stimulate new producers, developers, and video game scholars who are committed to building a more aware and diverse community.

This paper aims to shed some light on the role of video games within the media industry and IT sector, on its contribution to the production and distribution of digital content in emerging economies. It offers a case study on the role of mobile devices as a factor of transformation and shows how under changing socio–economic conditions, the transformations enabled the creation of digital ecosystems and innovative business models.

The paper is based on desk research, a review of literature and trade press and comments from experts and industry players.

The paper argues that as the internet is going mobile, driven by data – mostly video – the new mobile platforms are becoming the key for the distribution of content and mobile games. Whether it is the history of browser games in China, mobile games in India or PC games in Russia, each national gaming industry has required a unique strategy for making money, building on some prominent cultural factors and adapting to the local economic conditions. The paper reveals that video games are now clearly a vital part of digital content production in these countries, while stressing upon the role of public policies.

The paper relies mostly on industry and consultancy data, as in such a fast-changing environment official data even when accessible are in most cases too old to remain relevant to identify the trends and the fast changing stakes. This calls for some caution about the data. Therefore, the data used should be treated as just signals of potential trends, sufficient to provide an appropriate overview of the evolution of the global mobile ecosystem.

This paper shows that the video games industry can serve as a pivot for the ICT industry. Besides, this prompts upstream and downstream industries of the entire digital entertainment market to thrive.

The paper shows that companies from emerging markets companies have been betting on a combination of factors: the development of the economies, the growth of the mobile market, emerging middle-classes and young customers. It provides a growth model that appears to be close to a “regular” industrial growth model.

Although there is a growing academic literature on the video games industry, few research have been devoted to specific issues of emerging economies and to the role of video games within the media industry and IT sector.

Despite the negative effects of toxicity on various aspects of esports communities, gamers continue to enthusiastically show their pride and engage with the game. Based on the stress and coping theory, the current study aims to shed light on how esports gamers cope with toxicity to develop toxicity tolerance by the mediation effect of positive reappraisal coping strategy.

A total of 456 gamers were included in the analysis. Structural equation modeling was performed to evaluate the hypothesized model. Gender differences in the toxicity-coping process were investigated using multi-group analysis.

The findings revealed the full mediation effect of positive reappraisal on the relationship between toxicity and toxicity tolerance, especially for male gamers. The empirical evidence of this study contributes to theorizing the transformative role of positive reappraisal in developing positive consumption outcomes when esports gamers experience toxicity in the game. The multi-group analysis provided further insights into differentiating the applicability and effectiveness of positive reappraisal based on gender.

The findings contributed to sport management and communication literature by allowing researchers and practitioners to move beyond a preventive coping mindset by facilitating a positive coping environment that encourages gamers to interpret the conversation and messages in a more positive manner.

This paper aims to explain the effect of flow, game repetition and brand familiarity on players’ brand attitude and purchase intention in the context of mobile advergaming.

Data from 227 participants who played a mobile advergame were analysed. Structural equation modelling with partial least squares was used to test the research model.

The results reveal that the independent variables (i.e. game repetition and brand familiarity) significantly influence the dependent variables explored in this study (i.e. brand attitude and purchase intentions of players). Results also show that brand familiarity influences players’ flow experience, which in turn significantly affects players’ purchase intentions.

The findings of this study are important for advertising practitioners and advergames’ developers as understanding the determinants of mobile advergaming effectiveness is crucial for designing successful advergames that persuade players the most.

This study contributes to the literature in two ways. First, it provides new insights into the effectiveness of mobile advergames, which is an under-researched area. Second, it offers empirical evidence of the effects of game repetition, flow and brand familiarity on mobile advergaming effectiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the antecedents of peer recommendations (generating positive word-of-mouth and recruiting others) in the context of mobile social games.

Drawing on the needs–supplies fit framework and social identity theory, this paper proposes that game design characteristics (challenge, fairness, innovativeness and ease of use) influence game identification, which further predicts word-of-mouth (WOM) generation and recruitment intention. This paper further suggests fits between gamer orientation (passing time and seeking achievements) and game design lead to enhanced game identification. The model was tested using data from an empirical survey with 767 mobile social gamers.

Game challenge, game fairness, game innovativeness and ease of use are positively associated with game identification, whereas game identification positively predicts WOM generation and recruitment intention. Achievement-seeking use was found to enhance the effects of game challenge and game fairness on game identification, and passing time use was found to strengthen the effects of game innovativeness and ease of use on game identification.

The findings of this study provide operable implications to facilitate peer recommendations in a mobile gaming context. The model was only tested within the context of mobile social games, however, so caution is advised when generalizing the findings to other game subgenres.

This study distinguishes itself from other peer recommendation studies by taking recruitment, a more straightforward and salient form of peer recommendation, into account. This paper enriches theory by investigating the antecedents and consequences of game identification. This study clarifies the underlying mechanism of how game design influences peer recommendations and examines the interactions between game design and gamer orientation.

Purpose – To examine the connection between social media and games, and to analyze information phenomena relating to them.

Design/methodology/approach – A survey of existing research is combined with results from two studies.

Findings – Players use game-related social media as an expansion of play and as a substitute of it, while avoiding information overload in the form of finding out so much that it damages the play experience.

Research limitations/implications – The number of potential game-related social media sources is so high that this chapter mostly presents just the early steps toward researching them further.

Practical implications – The chapter reveals the tight connection that has been formed between games and social media, showing that to properly research one, a look at also the other is necessary.

Originality/value – The chapter presents initial guidelines on where to start in researching game-related social media, an area that has so far seen very little research from both game studies and information scholars.