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Digital gaming has become one of the largest entertainment sectors worldwide, increasingly turning the medium into an attractive vehicle for the communication of advertising messages. As a result, the incorporation of products or brands in digital games or in-game advertising (IGA) is expected to grow steadily over the course of the following years. However, much work is still needed to determine and optimize the effectiveness of IGA. The goal of the chapter is to advance IGA effectiveness research by investigating the influence of three aspects of the context in which a game is played and the player’s involvement in response to this context on brand awareness.

To this purpose, three experiments were set up. The first experiment (between-subjects, N = 121) investigated the impact of the social setting in which a game is played, the second experiment (within-subjects, N = 31) examined the effect of the game controls that are used, and the third experiment (between-subjects, N = 62) analyzed the influence of the game story.

The findings of the experiments show that the game context can significantly influence the way in which people recall and recognize brands that are included within its environment and that examining the player’s involvement in response to this context can provide useful information regarding the processes underlying this effect.

These findings contribute to the knowledge of when, how, and in which games advertising can be incorporated in order to achieve games’ full potential as an advertising medium.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate toxic behaviour (TB) that significantly harms individuals’ gameplay experience in multiplayer online video games. Multiplayer online video games allow to simultaneously interact with others in real time. They can be considered as digital communities unifying a group of players within a video game. TB is characterized by spreading a bad mood (e.g. upsetting and insulting) leading to unsatisfying outcomes in team-based multiplayer environments.

Using mixed methods, the authors show that handling TB should be addressed more firmly on a level of game design. First, the authors test the explanatory power of the online disinhibition effect (ODE) and its antecedents on TB using a quantitative survey (N = 320) and structural equation modelling. Specifically, the authors show that dissociative anonymity, asynchronicity, solipsistic introjection, dissociative imagination and minimization of authority have a mediated effect through toxic disinhibition as predictors of TB. Second, the authors conduct a focus group workshop (N = 10) with experts from diverse disciplines to derive design principles on a level of game design.

The results indicate that transparency and imminent feedback are still underutilized elements in game design that can significantly buffer several forms of TB. By developing a heuristic prototype and exemplary design principles in subsequent categories, the authors address all relevant in-game scenarios. With this study, the authors provide researchers and practitioners helpful insights on how to increase the well-being and safety of gaming communities.

ODE already showed its explanatory potential in the neighbouring context of cyberbullying. Embedded in theories of negative behaviour on the internet, the authors propose a holistic and theory-driven approach to handle TB on a level of game design. The authors’ insights allow for a better understanding of an innovative entity of the dark side of technology diffusion and adverse side effects linked to it.

This study aimed to identify subgroups of esports players based on their gaming behavior patterns across game genres and compare self-efficacy, social efficacy, loneliness and three dimensions of quality of life between these subgroups.

324 participants were recruited from prolific academic to complete an online survey. We employed latent profile analysis (LPA) to identify subgroups of esports players based on their behavioral patterns across genres. Additionally, a one-way multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was conducted to test the association between cluster memberships and development and well-being outcomes, controlling for age and gender as covariates.

LPA analysis identified five clusters (two single-genre gamer groups, two multigenre gamer groups and one all-genre gamer group). Univariate analyses indicated the significant effect of the clusters on social efficacy, psychological health and social health. Pairwise comparisons highlighted the salience of the physical enactment-plus-sport simulation genre group in these outcomes.

This study contributes to the understanding of the development and well-being benefits experienced by various esports consumers, as well as the role of specific gameplay in facilitating targeted outcomes among these consumer groups.

Emerging transformative service research (TSR) studies adopt a service system lens to conceptualise well-being across the micro, meso and macro levels of aggregation, typically within an organisation. No TSR has yet examined well-being across multiple interconnected organisations at the highest level of aggregation, the meta or service ecosystem level. This study aims to explore how value co-creation and, critically, co-destruction among different actors across interacting organisations enhances or destroys multiple levels of well-being.

This study uses semi-structured, in-depth interviews to collect data from five types of key actors (n = 35): players, team owners, tournament operations managers, casters and viewers, across 29 interconnected organisations in the oceanic esports industry. The interviews were coded using NVivo 12 and thematically analysed.

Resource integration on each level of aggregation within a service ecosystem (micro, meso, macro and meta) can co-create and co-destroy value, which leads to the enhancement and destruction of multiple levels of well-being (individual, collective, service system and service ecosystem). Value co-creation and co-destruction, as well as the resultant well-being outcomes, were interconnected across the different levels within the service ecosystem.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to incorporate a multi-actor perspective on the well-being consequences of value co-creation and value co-destruction within a service ecosystem as opposed to service system. Thus, this research also contributes to the minimal research which examines the outcomes of value co-destruction, rather than value co-creation, at multiple levels of aggregation.

Online games are popular applications of Internet technology, with over 2.8 billion users worldwide. Many players engage in team gameplay, indicating that online games are suitable media through which players connect with their friends. However, past studies have not examined the ability of games to assist players in connecting with their friends, indicating a gap. To fill this gap, the authors propose a new concept, the friend-connecting affordance, which is the ability of an online game to enable players to contact friends within the game.

The authors built a model to explain how games' friend-connecting affordances influence game loyalty. The authors gathered responses from 1,347 online players and used structural equation modeling to test the model.

The authors found that friend-connecting affordances and team participation influence game loyalty. Gaming intensity and gaming history can moderate the impact of friend-connecting affordances.

This new affordance can be realized through various game elements, offering unique and actionable insights to game makers. The authors also compared the friend-connecting affordances among a number of popular online games, providing insights specific to each game and increasing the practical value of the findings.

A 30-item Sport Interest Inventory (SII) was developed and validated for measuring ten unique motives related to consumer interest at an international sporting event. Spectators (N=1,321) attending five different US venues during the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup were administered the SII. Analysis revealed that sport and team interest, excitement, supporting women's opportunity in sport, aesthetics and vicarious achievement explained 35 per cent of the variance in spectators' interest in the event. Results provide sport marketers with consumer-based marketing strategies, particularly for women's sport.

Board games such as Monopoly and Scrabble enjoy a great deal of popularity among players of all ages. The objective of this study was to identify the characteristics of board games that impact significantly on players' appreciation.

A review of the literature and a qualitative study with players and board game professionals resulted in the identification of seven explanatory factors. A survey was conducted among 169 adult players selected using an area sampling method.

The survey results revealed that the most important factor in explaining players' appreciation of a board game was the extent to which the game was able to make them fantasize and live uncommon experiences. The second factor in importance was the entertainment that is associated with playing a game. Some unexpected differences were found between male and female players. Whereas the surprise elements of a game had a positive impact on men's appreciation, they were not significant among women. In turn, the rhythm of the game had a positive effect on women's appreciation whereas it did not impact on men's appreciation.

Players' perceptions were limited to board games with which they were familiar.

The results of this research offer some insights for the design and marketing of new board games. They indicate that the success of a new board game depends on the game's capacity to make players live a unique play experience and interact with other players. They also suggest that marketing communication should be adapted to the segments of male and female board game players.

This research brings useful knowledge about the factors that make consumers enjoy a board game.

This paper provides a conceptual discussion of the bidirectional relationship between knowledge management (KM) and intellectual capital (IC) in a specific subset of knowledge-based organisations, i.e. professional sport organisations. Through the review and conceptual discussion of two relevant research themes, i.e. KM strategies for IC value creation and IC codification, this paper aims to highlight research gaps useful to future research.

The authors apply a systematic literature review method to analyse 66 management and accounting studies on KM and IC in sport organisations. Internal and external validity tests support the methodology adopted.

The authors provide a conceptual model to explain how KM strategies about IC investments can be optimal, i.e. they create value for all the stakeholders but also suboptimal, i.e. they create value only for a group of stakeholders. Next, they provide evidence of the opportunistic use of the codification associated with IC investments that impair financial reporting information transparency and mislead managers and investors.

The results are informative for managers, regulators and policymakers to mitigate the inefficiencies regarding KM and IC codification and decisions.

This study contributes to the understanding of the bidirectional relationship between KM and IC in knowledge-based organisations by focussing on professional sport organisations in which KM and IC have played an important role for a long time. It also includes future avenues for advances in managing, measuring and reporting IC.

The chapter explores if and how online and face-to-face organizational environments can interact, and if and how this interaction could foster managerial practices to sustain personal growth, organizational development, and employee–organization relationships.

Research project is based on an emblematic case study: Fubles.com is a social sport sharing platform with one of the most active sport communities in Europe. This case is representative of a novel initiative, useful in understanding how social media drive organizational results.

Social media activities do not always substitute face-to-face relationships; online connections can enhance relationships, in terms of quantity, quality, and fairness, generating comprehensive reconfiguration of people practices, before and after the game. Thanks to social networks, organizations can support interpersonal contacts, enabling people to organize collective activities both virtually and physically.

The case advocates three levels of possible organizational reconfigurations through social media (individual, collective, and organizational) that can foster the quality of the employee–organization relationship.

Results suggest that social media are sources of new and innovative ways to interact within and across organizations, reinforcing not only the online interactions, but especially traditional face-to-face connections through a process of reconfiguration of people practices.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the ways in which information acts as a commodity in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), and how players pay for items and services with information practices.

Through meta-theoretical analysis of the game environment as a set of information systems, one of retrieval and one social, the paper shows how players’ information practices influence their access to game content, organizational status and relationship to real-money trade.

By showing how information trading functions in MMORPGs, the paper displays the importance of information access for play, the efficiency of real money trade and the significance of information practice -based services as a relatively regular form of payment in virtual worlds. Players furthermore shown to contribute to the information economy of the game with the way in which they decide not to share some information, so as to prevent others from a loss of game content value due to spoilers.

The subject, despite the popularity of online games, has been severely understudied within library and information science. The paper contributes to that line of research, by showing how games function as information systems, and by explaining how they, as environments and contexts, influence and are influenced by information practices.