Patrick Stacey

A temporal perspective of the computer game development process

Abstract.  This paper offers an insight into the games software development process from a time perspective by drawing on an in‐depth study in a games development organization. The wider market for computer games now exceeds the annual global revenues of cinema. We have, however, only a limited scholarly understanding of how games studios produce games. Games projects require particular attention because their context is unique. Drawing on a case study, the paper offers a theoretical conceptualization of the development process of creative software, such as games software. We found that the process, as constituted by the interactions of developers, oscillates between two modes of practice: routinized and improvised, which sediment and flux the working rhythms in the context. This paper argues that while we may predeterminately lay down the broad stages of creative software development, the activities that constitute each stage, and the transition criteria from one to the next, may be left to the actors in the moment, to the temporality of the situation as it emerges. If all development activities are predefined, as advocated in various process models, this may leave little room for opportunity and the creative fruits that flow from opportunity, such as enhanced features, aesthetics and learning.

Workplace stress from actual and desired computer-mediated communication use: a multi-method study

The use of computer-mediated communication applications can lead to workplace stress for employees. However, such stress is influenced not only by how individuals actually use computer-mediated communication applications but also how they desire to use them. This article examines how the individuals actual and desired use of communication tools together influence his or her workplace stress. It does so across a range of computer-mediated media (e.g. email or instant messaging) and workplace stressors (e.g. workload or work relationships). This investigation is conducted using a multi-method research design. The quantitative study found that desired and actual use together influenced workplace stress, mostly for email, but not for other media. The qualitative study further showed that such influence depends on organisational conditions such as available media or co-workers preferences. The findings emphasise the importance of considering the individuals’ desired use of CMC media and their subjective appraisals of different media.

Birds of a feather talk together: user influence on language adoption

Language is in constant flux be it from changes in meaning to the introduction of new terms. At the user level it changes by users accommodating their language in relation to whom they are in contact with. By mining diffusions of new terms across social networks we detect the influence between users and communities. This is then used to compute the user activation threshold at which they adopt new terms dependent on their neighbours. We apply this method to four different networks from two popular on-line social networks (Reddit and Twitter). This research highlights novel results: by testing the network through random shuffles we show that the time at which a user adopts a term is dependent on the local structure, however, a large part of the influence comes from the global structure and that influence between users and communities is not significantly dependent on network structures.

Building and Maintaining Strategic Agility: An Agenda and Framework for Executive IT-Leaders

While much literature on strategic agility has focused on strategic flexibility and adaption at organizational levels, there is a need to provide specific guidance at lower, more discrete levels of analysis. This article focuses on the context of a particular professional group, executive information technology (IT) leaders, who have received attention in recent years for their evolving strategic role at the forefront of firms. It identifies and illustrates a number of practices these actors demonstrate in building and maintaining strategic agility, and it concludes by conceptualizing these practices in an agenda and framework for managers.

Simplifying fitness games for users with learning disabilities

Motivating people with learning disabilities (LD) to carry out physical exercises is a difficult task. Simplified fitness games can address this problem. Yet we do not know much about the design characteristics of the fitness games for this particular user group. Based on Rouse’s process model, this paper explores the design characteristics in three development phases: ‘conceptual outline’, ‘implementation’ and ‘outcome’. A mixed-method approach has been adopted. First, interviews and observations were conducted. Based on the qualitative findings and a literature review, a questionnaire was generated addressing the important design characteristics in each phases. The questionnaire surveyed 235 people from both game and healthcare industries to assess their agreement to the design characteristics. By identifying critical design characteristics in each phase, our paper provides guidance for an inclusive and nuanced approach to designing games for the users with LD. It identifies concepts in fitness games that intrinsically motivate physical activities.

Geographically distributed sensemaking: developing understanding in forum-based software development teams

Global software development is becoming increasingly popular. Working in geographically distributed teams affords advantages to both employer and employee alike. Despite this, distributed working remains a point of contention for many organisations, with some claiming it unsuitable for complex collaborative work. Many argue that the complex act of team sense making (the process by which a team develops an understanding of a situation or problem) can only effectively be performed in colocated environments. To investigate this assumption, we examine the communications of a geographically distributed game development team. This global team communicates entirely via forums, yet still manages complex sense making tasks asynchronously. We use thematic analysis to investigate how themes develop during online conversations, and use speech act sequences to explore how understanding is developed during these asynchronous conversations. Our findings demonstrate how collective sense making occurs within a real-world, geographically distributed team.

How funny are games? Violent games content and studio well-being

This chapter focuses on the twin responsibilities of game studios for the social groups they create content for and employ. Through two nascent and ongoing studies we investigate the contextual forces of violent game development and gamework well-being. Our analysis of both studies draws on the theory of interpretive schemes (for instance, Bartunek, 1984; Ranson et al., 1980) as an analytical lens (Walsham, 2003), which theorizes about the systems of meaning that people draw on in order to make collective sense of phenomena and conduct. This chapter is organized as follows: first, key motivations, prior literature, a theoretical framework, the research approach and methods used are introduced. We then present two empirical studies regarding violent game development and gamework well-being; each contains a case study, analysis and conceptualization. These sections are followed by a synthesized discussion and conclusion.