| Evaluation of Practice-Based Models of Co-production and Collaboration in the Creative Industries (Troubadour Project) |
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The project examined and evaluated existing practice-based models of co-production and collaboration in the creative industries, in particular the production of videogames. The project team are: Angela Lin (University of Sheffield) and Emma Cheshire (Yorkshire Screen)
The project The videogames industry makes a valuable contribution to the UK economy. Between 2006 and 2008 alone videogames made in the UK generated global revenues of £4bn. This contributed to the global games market which is worth £18bn and currently it is growing at 9 per cent per year (Gurardian, 2008). The recent figure showed that sales of videogames in the UK are in excess of £1.9bn and outsell music and videos in the UK (BBC, 2008). Nevertheless the videogames industry is highly volatile, the costs of production are rising rapidly, and the sales are unpredictable. A virtual organisation consists of a network of individuals and organisational units linked by a third party (e.g. a hub) that flexibly coordinates their activities and combines their skills and resources in order to achieve common goals (Lin and Patterson, 2006). From an organisational perspective ‘virtuality’ is “the ability of the organisation to consistently obtain and coordinate critical competencies through its design of value-adding business processes and governance mechanisms involving external and internal constituency to delivery differential, superior value in the marketplace” (Venkatraman and Henderson, 1994, quoted in Sieber, 2001: 251). A virtual organisation can also be temporary and project oriented. That is, the organisation ceases to exist when a project is completed or no longer exists. The advantages of using a virtual organisation are: (1) combining the resources of participating parities so that the organisation as a whole is able to participate in a range of projects that they would otherwise not be able to pursue individually (2) sharing knowledge and resources in order to mitigate risks associate with the innovations (3) utilising resources through the division of labour. The computer and video games industry can potentially benefit from using a virtual organisation arrangement to mitigate the risks associated in particular with the production of prototype in particular. Typically games developers have to build a prototype and one or more playable levels of the game to demonstrate the technical feasibility and sales potential of the game to a publisher (UK Trade and Investment, 2007). This process is usually self-funded and there is no guarantee that the game will be published. This purpose of this project is hence to examine and evaluate the effectiveness of a virtual organisation as a working model for building a prototype videogame. The project addresses the following issues:
The project uses the GRIPP (Game Republic Integrated Prototype Production) programme initiated by Game Republic, Screen Yorkshire as an example to illustrate the fitness of virtual organization model in the videogames industry. The project undertakes in-depth interview with the Business Director of Screen Yorkshire who provided insights into the games community in Yorkshire region and uses secondary data including media stories, industrial surveys, and the literature in game studies. References BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7709298.stm Lin, A. and Patterson, D. (2006) An Investigation into the Barriers to Introducing Virtual Enterprise Networks. In Wang, Y., Heng, M. and Chau, P. (Eds.) Supply Chain Management: Issues in the New Era of Collaboration and Competition. Hershey, Idea Group Inc.
Sieber, P. (2001) Virtuality in the IT industry. IN Barnes, S. and Hunt, B. (Eds.) Ecommerce and v-business: business models for global success. Oxford, Butterworth-Heinemann. |
