Entertainment Markets: Changed Market Dynamics in the Video Game Industry
(A2025-126172)

AUTHORS

Michiel Van Crombrugge, Erasmus School of Economics

ABSTRACT

Digitalization and technology have disrupted entertainment markets, changing their business models and the way they deliver products to consumers. This special session, which is one of two related sessions on entertainment markets (see also Entertainment Markets: Navigating Success and Shaping Consumer Experiences), addresses opportunities of these changed market dynamics in the video game industry. Starting from the premise that current complexity of video game ecosystems requires new insights from a diverse set of rich data (Paper 1), the special session illustrates this by investigating software sellers’ and platform owners’ engagement and post-purchase monetization strategies (Paper 2), influencer and (video game) streamers’ content creation strategies (Paper 3), and software sellers’ platform release strategies across platforms of differentiated quality (Paper 4): 1. Quest for Insights: Leveraging Data from the Video Game Ecosystem in Marketing Roman Welden, Michael Haenlein, Kelly Hewett, Keith Marion Smith, John Hulland Over the past decade marketers have recognized the research opportunities video games provide, but failed to adequately account for the unique features of the data generated within this ecosystem. This paper identifies six distinct pillars embedded in this ecosystem, and present three challenges with data gathering and analysis that arise from the co-creation of value within it. Marketers can make adaptions to address these challenges. 2. Engagement in Platform Markets: A (Video) Game Changer? Michiel Van Crombrugge, Stefan Stremersch Empirical studies of video game sales success overlook the industry’s focus on engagement. Leveraging over 14,000 players’ daily video game engagement, this study investigates how video game seller strategies affect consumers’ engagement differently than their sales. We find that releasing titles on subscription services is the strongest driver of engagement, overshadowing software quality or exclusivity, of which the importance has decreased compared to sales findings. Instead, franchises, non-superstars, and multihomed titles perform better on engagement than on sales. This further impacts post-purchase monetization strategies. 3. Content for Value: Optimizing Influencer Content Strategy for Enhanced User Engagement Lingling Zhang, Guo Bai, PK Kannan While much research analyzes firms’ influencer selection strategies and campaign outcomes, less attention is given to influencers/streamers’ content strategies to sustain engagement and monetize their platforms. This study examines over 690,000 posts from 4,400 influencers/streamers to analyze the semantic alignment of organic and sponsored content. Findings reveal that engagement can be sustained through strategic content choices. An "exploration" strategy in organic content helps maintain interest, while alignment between organic and sponsored posts enhances trust and engagement. 4. Publishing Software on Superior versus Inferior Platforms Nico Schauerte, Yuri Peers Marketing mix elasticities for software success may depend on whether the software is released on superior (e.g., consoles) or inferior (e.g., handhelds) platforms. Using a panel dataset of video games spanning 18 years, we find that software quality and advertising elasticities are substantially higher on superior platforms, while inferior platforms benefit more from first-party software development and leveraging existing IP.