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Bibliography: " Consecrating video games as cultural artifacts: Intellectual legitimation as a source of industry renewal" (2018) by Alexander Styhre and Anna Maria Szczepanska, and Björn Remneland-Wikham


Styhre, Alexander, Anna Maria Szczepanska, and Björn Remneland-Wikhamn. 2018. "Consecrating video games as cultural artifacts: Intellectual legitimation as a source of industry renewal". Scandinavian Journal of Management. 34 (1): 22-28.

The study gives a detailed account of the video game industry as a knowledge-intensive, profession-based, high-growth industry at the intersection between entertainment, computer sciences, and cultural production, thus requiring what Styhre et’al suggests a consecration of the video games in order to acquire legitimization in order to explore new economic possibilities through new technology and market penetration. Specifically, in the video game industry, the consecration of some video games and some video game genres is intended to leverage the status of the video game production and video games in the eyes of key constituencies, including e.g., high-brow consumers and new entrants into the industry, primarily female presumptive co-workers. This is done through an empirical interview with results suggesting three interrelated themes included in the consecration of video games: (1) video games are treated as a form of cultural expression based on certain skills comparable to those of an artisan, including the ability to conceive of new images of digital objects and what they can accomplish and create new stories that can be translated into video games; (2) includes grappling with some of the genre inequality issues of the industry, including forms of sexism in the video games per se and the masculine dominance in the industry and in its client-base more largely; and (3) includes an emphasis on the “creative fringe” of the industry that build video games and apps as part of a wider social activism project, making issues such as gamification and the question of diversity in video games as key concerns.

The outlines how video games should not only be treated as engineered digital objects, but also consecrated as cultural artifact siding with, for example, literature, visual art, music composition, and cinema. Thus, it emphasizes how growing industries need to participate in legitimation work, including consecration of it products, to penetrate new market segments, and reach new customer groups.

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