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Free Play: Games, Labor, and the Neg...

Welch, Tom,

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Free Play: Games, Labor, and the Negotiation of Value on the Internet /

Record Type:	Electronic resources : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	Free Play: Games, Labor, and the Negotiation of Value on the Internet // Tom Welch.
Author:	Welch, Tom,
Description:	1 electronic resource (267 pages)
Notes:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 86-03, Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International86-03A.
Subject:	Communication. -
Online resource:	https://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=31560362
ISBN:	9798384054177

Free Play: Games, Labor, and the Negotiation of Value on the Internet /
Welch, Tom,

Free Play: Games, Labor, and the Negotiation of Value on the Internet /Tom Welch. - 1 electronic resource (267 pages)

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 86-03, Section: A.

Since their inception, and for a variety of reasons, developers, creators, and designers have released video games for free. In particular, the creation of the internet enabled the free distribution of game commodities online. Platforms like bulletin board systems, Flash portals, and the app store further enabled free game development and distribution. Yet these games, their audiences, and the labor required to make them have received little academic attention in comparison to traditionally distributed games. This dissertation analyzes and historicizes free games online from the late 1980s to the early 2010s in order to ask why developers might release games for free, and what value might be generated from that method of distribution. It theorizes and explains the multiple valences of value that are generated from free game distribution. The main argument surrounding value in the context of free games is that while free distribution enables a wider variety of game development and opens play to a wider audience, free distribution also carries with it specific challenges such as online harassment and a lack of guaranteed that can impede developer success. Ultimately, this dissertation assumes an ambivalent epistemology to investigate how free online game distribution generates value that is both economic and non-economic, often manifesting in the form of affective, communal, or cultural values that are dependent on the particular social context under which the game is released, and which also often develop hand in hand with ideas of race, gender, and sexuality.Using a combination of discourse analysis, platform studies, critical media industry studies, and internet archival work, this dissertation merges the historical contextualization of free game platforms with a political economic analysis of their generation of a multiplicity of values both monetary and otherwise alongside a discursive and critical analysis of the games themselves, the circulation of social value surrounding them, and their implication in the affective lives of users and developers.

English

ISBN: 9798384054177Subjects--Topical Terms:

524709
Communication.
Subjects--Index Terms:

Internet studies

Free Play: Games, Labor, and the Negotiation of Value on the Internet /
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650 4 $a Film studies. $3 2122736
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653 $a Labor
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653 $a New media
653 $a Platform studies
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