From Crunch to Grind: Adopting Servitization in Project-Based Creative Work.

The digital game industry has embraced servitization - a strategic orientation toward customer centricity in production-based firms - to deeply monetize digital games. Though some note the resource-intensive nature of delivering services and suggest inherent risks in its adoption, extant literature is uncritical. This article draws on labour process theory to critique the impact of servitization on workers at the point of production. We conducted in-depth interviews at a large North American game development studio. The results show the human cost of servitization, generally overshadowed by financial considerations. Specifically, we theorize that servitization increases the indeterminacy of labour and this must be compensated for if servitization is to realize its cost-benefit potential. The result is an intensification of labour through additional control imperatives which make workers accountable to consumers through deterministic success metrics, impact the creative process and direct creative outputs in real time.

Games-as-a-service: Conflicted identities on the new front-line of video game development.

As creative industries begin to experiment with service and subscriptions models, prior research suggests that such changes in production and consumption carry important implications for workers. Using the theoretical lens of occupational communities, this empirical study investigates the impact of servitization-that is, the transition from a product to a service-dominant logic-on the identity of video game developers. It theorizes that service workers' skills and mind-set, relationships with peers and players, internal and external reputation, as well as development principles and values all experience disruptions, leading to the emergence of a distinct identity.