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This study aims to propose a model for predicting consumers’ esports videogame engagement on their ensuing consumption behaviors, which remains nebulous to date.

After approaching esports consumers in different gaming zones in Pakistan, this paper collected data from 364 videogame-based esports consumers. This paper deployed SmartPLS 3.2.8 software to perform the partial least squares-structural equation modeling-based analyzes.

The structural model results show that consumers’ affective and behavioral esports videogame engagement positively affects their consumption behavior, including heightened community engagement, purchase intent, coproduction, word-of-mouth and new player recruitment. However, while consumers’ cognitive esports engagement was found to positively impact community engagement, new player recruitment and coproduction, it failed to predict consumers’ esports-related purchase intent or word-of-mouth behaviors.

The findings reveal that a strategic focus on consumers’ esports game engagement will enable practitioners to nurture desirable consumer behaviors, including enhanced purchase intent, coproduction, word-of-mouth and new player recruitment behaviors, thus warranting consumer engagement’s strategic value as a key esports gaming metric.

Empirical research into the role of consumers’ esports videogame engagement on their ensuing consumption behaviors remains scant to date. Based on this gap, this study offers a timely contribution by exploring and validating a model that gauges the effect of consumers’ cognitive, emotional and behavioral esports videogame engagement on their community engagement, purchase intention, coproduction, word-of-mouth and new player recruitment. It, thus, offers important insight into the rapidly advancing field of digital esports games.

Though the videogame literature is thriving, little remains known regarding the effectiveness of pop-up ads that appear in videogames. Addressing this gap, this study, therefore, aims to explore pop-up ads as an important tool to prompt gamer-perceived advertisement value and their subsequent intent to install the advertised videogame.

To frame the analyses, the authors adopt and extend Ducoffe’s advertising value model by incorporating the visual/audio aesthetic videogame components that are largely overlooked in prior research. Using a self-administered survey, data were collected from 321 online gamers. The authors tested the model by using partial-least-squares-based structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The results indicate that pop-up ad-related incentives, entertainment, credibility, personalization, audio aesthetics and irritation significantly affect user-perceived ad value. In turn, perceived ad value was found to affect players’ intent to install the advertised videogame.

Though the findings corroborate the importance of pop-up ads being perceived as informative and/or entertaining, they also emphasize the value of personalized ads, ad-related incentives and audio aesthetic, which impact gamers’ intent to install the advertised videogame.

This study advances managerial understanding of videogame-based services, which is expected to be particularly useful for freemium-based videogame marketers and developers.

By extending Ducoffe’s model of advertising value, the authors apply the proposed framework in the online videogaming-based pop-up ad context, and explore the effect of user-perceived pop-up ad value on their intent to install the advertised videogame.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss an assignment using videogames to demonstrate theories from in-class readings. Game-like learning principles (Gee, 2007), collaborative learning in games (Echeverria et al., 2011) and gamification (Sheldon, 2012) are just a few examples of the discussion areas in videogames and education research. But as Rice (2014) finds, there are few available lesson-plans and examples of everyday classroom use of popular videogames.

In response to this need, this paper discusses classroom use of free popular videogames as cultural artifact examples for course content discussions in a Videogames and Literacies Junior Writing Course offered within an English department.

This paper describes the assignment and learning goals, specifically discussing the first iteration and subsequent changes made to aid students in their presentations and learning. Included in this paper are discussions of technology affordances within the classroom space, student reactions and student successes and failures with games. This assignment asks students to find a videogame example to use as demonstrations of the course material as they lead class discussion.

Asking students to use videogames and game play to engage course content also engages students in higher-order cognitive thinking about play and game mechanics, helps students analyze course material and develops presentation skills using videogames to discuss course material. In examining videogames as more than just entertainment, students see games as learning tools with ways of teaching culture, teaching learning and testing learning.

Proposes to look at how many designers and researchers have become interested in how videogames can serve as forms of cultural expression beyond entertainment alone.

The study is based on views from the videogame industry and the educational system.

This article suggests that both the videogame industry and the compulsory educational system are engaged in commensurate crises. The videogame industry is creatively rich but risk‐averse, motivated primarily by wealth and reinforced by its own success. The education establishment is bureaucratic and self‐effacing, endorsing the production of complacency over challenge. With videogames and education caught in similar ruts, to support change in one means endorsing a revolution in the other.

Compares the videogame industry with the educational establishment and suggests ways in which the videogame industry can assist education.

Videogame play is more popular among young males compared with young females. The present study aims to investigate spatial visualization ability as an explanation for this gender gap. The premise is based on a well‐documented gender difference in spatial ability favoring males and assumes that spatial ability would be an advantage in playing videogames. Also, reports in the literature indicate improvement in spatial ability following videogame play, suggesting that play may specifically task spatial ability.

A convenience sample of 114 university students aged 18 to 24 answered questions on attitudes and videogame behavior and completed a psychometric test of spatial visualization ability.

Regression analysis indicated that interest in videogame play is significantly predicted by gender, interest in science fiction, and number of semesters of foreign language completed (with the latter having a negative influence). Mediation analysis suggested that neither of the latter two variables mediates the gender effect. Although spatial visualization ability was significantly correlated with videogame interest, this was found to be a spurious (non‐causal) association, due to both variables being influenced by gender.

Limitations include the narrow age range of subjects (18‐24) and the focus of the study on spatial visualization ability and a limited number of other variables.

The finding that semesters of foreign language completed and interest in science fiction significantly predict videogame interest is apparently novel. The former variable may be a proxy for preference for verbal (semantic) information processing over visual information processing, and this may explain the significant negative correlation between semesters of foreign language completed and videogame interest.

The aim of this paper is to describe the potential of the videogame as a mass communication medium and to propose a videogame‐based public outreach strategy for education and inspiration to space science and space activities.

The objective was achieved by means of a semiotic approach to the medium under discussion. The subject scope of the paper was further developed and supported by an overview of existing case studies related to the topic. Based on the aforementioned analysis and on original ideas, new concepts and strategies on the subject are proposed.

The videogame medium has excellent potential for promotion, marketing and educational applications. Moreover, spin‐off applications in the field of simulation‐based research can also be envisioned. The proposed concepts, although specifically referring to the space sector, are applicable to many other industrial and non‐industrial fields, including libraries.

The paper hints at many possible spin‐off applications for videogames in the field of communication, marketing and simulation‐based research.

The concepts proposed in the paper outline novel marketing and outreach strategies (together with other spin‐off applications) based on a rather underestimated medium, i.e. the videogame, which has yet to receive proper attention from scholars.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the sociocultural underpinnings of wiki-based knowledge production in the videogame domain, and to elucidate how these underpinnings relate to the formation of wikis as resources of videogame documentation.

The paper is based on a three-month ethnographic investigation of knowledge practices on the Dark Souls Wiki (DSW). In focus of the analysis were the boundaries and knowledge aims of the DSW, together with how its contributors organized inquiries and used various sources, methods of investigation, and ways of warranting knowledge claims.

The principal result of the paper is an empirical account of how the DSW functions as a culture of knowledge production, and how the content and structure of the wiki connects to the knowledge practices of its contributors. Four major factors that influenced knowledge practices on the wiki were identified: the structures and practices established by the community’s earlier wiki efforts; principles and priorities that informed wiki knowledge practices; the characteristics of the videogame in focus of the site’s knowledge-building work; the extent and types of relevant documentation provided by videogame industry, the videogaming press included.

Previous research has shown interest in investigating the mechanisms by which community-created knowledge and online resources of documentation emerge, and how these are utilized in play. There is, however, little research seeking to elucidate the sociocultural structures and practices that determine and sustain collaborative online videogame knowledge production.

Proposes to argue that current assumptions about media effects in videogames fail to take into account the variety of messages and potential effects embedded in games.

A survey of the game “Grand Theft Auto III” and a short, illustrative, review of “videogames as learning” perspectives.

Even a game such as “Grand Theft Auto III”, pilloried for its anti‐social messages and assumed negative behavioral effects, reveals a significant number of positive social messages.

This paper only illustrates the conflicting nature of media effects assumptions – both positive and negative. It does not attempt to provide an exhaustive review of or context for either the subject‐matter or the research area.

The perspective presented provides a warning to educators intent on assuming positive learning benefits (effects) of the videogame medium just as it argues against a simple reading of videogames as negative media by groups seeking to censor games.

This is the first paper to identify the underlying assumptions of both the “videogames as learning” and the “videogames as social danger” camps as both sharing the same conceptual framework.

Videogames are complex, meaningful and multimodal texts. This study aims to explore how students could learn about narratives from, and be engaged by, playing a videogame and how a teacher adapted their pedagogy to incorporate the young adult videogame (YA game) What Remains of Edith Finch into an English Language Arts curriculum.

This case study examined the experiences of a classroom teacher and students in a Year 10 English class in Australia. Thematic analysis included a wide range of data, including interviews, surveys, observations and artefacts.

First, students demonstrated a strong understanding of the game as a narrative text, including essential components of narrative such as plot, characterisation, themes, settings and literary techniques. Second, students experienced a consistently high level of engagement and embodiment throughout the study as a consequence of the interactive, collaborative and multimodal nature of YA games. Third, the teacher discovered that he was able to achieve key curriculum outcomes with the videogame through re-imagining pedagogy.

A playful approach allows teachers and students to be curious about the diverse narrative pathways possible within YA games and offers new opportunities to experience embodiment within and through digital texts.

This paper aims to shed some light on the history of the Chinese videogames industry, to document the growth of the leading companies and reveal how they have been morphing into platforms delivering constellations of apps and digital content (audiovisual, films, music, literature, video streaming […]). The paper tracks the development of digital services through the prism of videogames thereby showing how this industry emerged out of the deployment of the internet.

The paper provides an overview and a synthesis of what is known about the Chinese game industry, particularly based on consultancy documents and publications from firms. The paper is based on desk research, a review of literature and trade press and the analysis of the annual reports of the leading players (NetEase, Tencent […]).

The rise of videogames and the creation of specific company’s “ecosystems” illustrate the capacity of the industry to innovate and its significance for the Chinese economy. It reveals that gaming has been a cornerstone of many Chinese technology companies. The (young) companies came up with the innovative business models (FTP, virtual items) that were required to further expand the market. They found new ways to interact with their customers through communities and various tools.

The paper relies on consultancy documents and publications from firms on heterogeneous data from industry and consultants. This approach comes with some limitations from a methodological viewpoint. It allows documenting the historical trends and describing the industrial landscape but not to qualify the relationships among players. Besides, the use of these sources leads to a greater focus on business models and a more limited one on the policy dimension. The latter is often perceived only through the glasses of the companies.

The data provided are meant to be useful to become familiar with the Chinese games industry.

The paper indicates that the online game industry is a complex web of activities with tensions and contradictions between stakeholders (industry, government and consumers). In the case of China, there is a conflict between the willingness to liberalize the economy and the will to maintain an ideological monopoly through cultural industries.

Little research has been devoted to the role of videogames in emerging economies, to its specific features and to the relationships with the media industry and the information and communications technology sector. The contribution of this “digital native” to the production and distribution of digital content remains less studied. The paper provides an up-to-date overview of the Chinese case.