Games in the platform economy steam's tangled markets - Thorhauge, Anne Mette (Bristol University Press, 2024)
Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 23 Jan 2024)
Front Cover -- Games in the Platform Economy: Steam's Tangled Markets -- Copyright information -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- List of Figures and Table -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Introduction: Steam's Tangled Markets -- Steam's tangled markets -- Platforms in the domain of digital games -- Business models of game platforms -- The role of player-driven economies -- An economic-sociological approach to markets -- Commodification of economic action? -- Reading guide -- 2 Platform Configurations in Gaming -- Arcades, consoles, and digital storefronts -- The platform in platforms -- Platforms as programmable architectures -- Platforms as multi-sided markets -- Platforms as infrastructures and organizational forms -- Platform practices -- Platform configurations in the contemporary game industry -- Platform configurations and business models in gaming -- Boxed content and retail -- Games as a service and the subscription-based business model -- Mobile gaming and free-to-play -- Player-driven economies and business models in online gaming -- Platforms, business models, and market orders -- 3 Economic Sociology and the Analysis of Platforms as Markets -- The market in platform studies -- Approaches to markets within classic economics and economic sociology -- The rise of the market society and the notion of embeddedness -- Markets as institutions: stability and change -- Tangled markets -- Multi-sided markets and tangled markets -- The analysis of the Steam platform as a tangled market -- 4 Valve Corporation and the Steam Platform -- Valve Corporation: incumbent or challenger? -- Storefront, social network, or tangled market? -- 5 Steam's Business Model -- The Steam platform -- The conversion of affective value into market value -- A diachronic accordance analysis of the Steam platform's development -- From download client to tangled market
The continuous expansion of the Steam store -- The monetization of playbour -- Expanding the scope of economic transactions -- The monetization of player interaction as a process of 'disembedment' -- 6 Shaping Market Interactions on the Steam Platform -- Critical analyses of digital platform architectures -- The Steam platform documentation as a rhetorical device -- Key features of the Steam business model -- The Steam store and its preferred business models -- Marketplaces on Steam -- All roads lead through the Steam Wallet -- 7 Economic Actors on the Steam Platform -- A few words on method -- Market power or marketplace power? Economic actors in the game market -- Economic actors in the Steam market order -- The business emphases of market actors on Steam -- The steam market order as a solution to the competition problem -- The Steam platform as market governance -- 8 Player Trading beyond Steam -- The exchange of game items beyond the Steam platform -- 'Powered by Steam, not affiliated with Valve Corp.' -- Steam's economic interests in extra-platform practices -- Monetary networks and money at the margins -- The skin ecosystem as a monetary network -- 9 User Monetization and Value Creation in Tangled Markets -- Commodification and the audience commodity -- The audience commodity and audience work in tangled markets -- Concluding remarks: the platformization of peer-to-peer transactions and the regulation of tangled markets -- Notes -- Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2 -- Chapter 3 -- Chapter 4 -- Chapter 5 -- Chapter 6 -- Chapter 7 -- Chapter 8 -- Chapter 9 -- References -- Index