Abstract
This chapter examines how an innovation-led industry such as video game development, which markets itself as community and norm-based industry wherein the gaming experience and the video game as a digital artefact are located at the centre of activities, related to more conventional business practices. For instance, the indie scene includes a number of stories about solitary game developers who have “made it big time” on the basis of inventive and entertaining video game concepts and design (the multimillion dollar business derived from Marcus “Notch” Person’s game Minecraft being perhaps the most well-cited case), but at the same time, the community is largely not business-minded inasmuch as developers enter the industry with the intention to make money. The chapter thus examines the tensions associated with money-making on the basis of a social theory of money that stipulates different classes of monies. More specifically, developers discriminate between making money as an ex ante ambition (which is frowned upon and sanctioned by social norms as it would compromise the video game as a freestanding manifestation of developers’ skills and aesthetic preferences) and money-making as an ex post outcome (which is tolerated, even encouraged, as that builds the funds that enable further development work, attracts new entrants, and creates a “positive buzz” in the industry). In the end, when all is said and done, the indie community maintains a diverse view of monetary compensation, which preserves professional ideologies, yet recognizes the business opportunities provided by their collective expertise.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Abolafia, M. (2001). Making markets: Opportunism and restraints on Wall Street. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Agarwal, S., Chomsisengphet, S., & Lim, C. (2017). What shapes consumer choice and financial products? A review. Annual Review of Financial Economic, 9, 127–146.
Akerlof, G. A., & Shiller, R. J. (2009). Animal spirits: How human psychology drives the economy, and why it matters for global capitalism. Princeton and London: Princeton University Press.
Amir, O., & Lobel, O. (2008). Stumble, predict, nudge: How behavioral economics informs law and policy. Columbia Law Review, 108(8), 2098–2139.
Anteby, M. (2010). Markets, morals, and practices of trade: Jurisdictional disputes in the U.S. commerce in cadavers. Administrative Science Quarterly, 55(4), 606–638.
Åstebro, T., Braunerhjelm, P., & Broström, A. (2013). Does academic entrepreneurship pay? Industrial and Corporate Change, 22(1), 281–311.
Axelrod, R. (1985). An evolutionary approach to norms. American Political Science Review, 80(4), 1095–1111.
Baker, W., & Jimerson, J. (1992). The sociology of money. American Behavioral Scientist, 35, 678–693.
Bandelj, N., Wherry, F. F., & Zelizer, V. A. (Eds.). (2017). Money talks: Explaining how money really works. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Bazin, A. (1967). What is cinema? (H. Gray, Trans.). Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.
Becker, H. S. (1982). Art worlds. Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press.
Bermiss, Y. S., & McDonald, R. (2018). Ideological misfit? Political affiliation and employee departure in the private-equity industry. Academy of Management Journal, 61(6), 2182–2209.
Brown, J., & Matsa, D. A. (2016). Boarding a sinking ship? An investigation of job applications to distressed firms. Journal of Finance, 71(2), 507–550.
Czarniawska, B., & Sköldberg, K. (2003). Tales of organizing: Symbolism and narration in management studies. In B. Czarniawska & G. Sevón (Eds.), The northern lights: Organization theory in Scandinavia. Malmö; Oslo; Copenhagen: Liber; Abstrakt; Copenhagen Business School Press.
Dalton, M. (1959). Men who manage: Fusion of feeling and theory in administration. New York: Wiley.
Decker, R. A., Haltiwanger, J., Jarmin, R. S., & Miranda, J. (2017). Declining dynamism, allocative efficiency, and the productivity slowdown. American Economic Review, 107(5), 322–326.
Desan, C. (2005). The market as a matter of money: Denaturalizing economic currency in American constitutional history. Law & Social Inquiry, 30(1), 1–60.
Dodd, N. (2014). The social life of money. Princeton and London: Princeton University Press.
Dorner, M., Fryges, H., & Schopen, K. (2017). Wages in high-tech start-ups—Do academic spin-offs pay a wage premium? Research Policy, 46(1), 1–18.
Eisenberg, M. A. (1999). Corporate law and social norms. Columbia Law Review, 99, 1253–1292.
Fine, G.-A. (2003). Crafting authenticity: The validation of identity in self-taught art. Theory and Society, 32(2), 153–180.
Goodhart, C. A. E. (2009). The continuing muddles of monetary theory: A steadfast refusal to face facts. Economica, 76(s1), 821–830.
Hausman, D. M., & Welch, B. (2010). Debate: To nudge or not to nudge. Journal of Political Philosophy, 18(1), 123–136.
Hirsh, C. E. (2009). The strength of weak enforcement: The impact of discrimination charges, legal environments, and organizational conditions on workplace segregation. American Sociological Review, 74(2), 245–271.
Katz, A. (1996). Taking private ordering seriously. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 144, 1745–1763.
Kim, J. W., Kogut, B., & Yang, J.-S. (2015). Executive compensation, fat cats, and best athletes. American Sociological Review, 80(2), 299–328.
Lane, C. A. (2010). The company of one: Neoliberal faith and the post-organizational man. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Lipkin, N. (2013). Examining Indie’s independence: The meaning of “Indie” games, the politics of production, and mainstream co-optation. Loading… The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association, 7(11), 8–24.
Matsa, D. A. (2018). Capital structure and a firm’s workforce. Annual Review of Financial Economics, 10, 387–412.
Matten, D., & Moon, J. (2008). “Implicit” and “explicit” CSR: A conceptual framework for a comparative understanding of corporate social responsibility. Academy of Management Review, 33(2), 404–424.
Maurer, B. (2006). On the anthropology of money. Annual Review of Anthropology, 35, 15–36.
Meuris, J., & Leana, C. (2018). The price of financial precarity: Organizational costs of employees’ financial concerns. Organization Science, 29(3), 398–417.
Neff, G. (2013). Venture labor: Work and the burden of risk in innovative industries. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press.
Posner, E. A. (1996). Law, economics, and inefficient norms. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 144, 1697–1744.
Resnik, D. B. (2007). The price of truth: How money affects the norms of science. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Schoar, A. (2010). The divide between subsistence and transformational entrepreneurship. Innovation Policy and the Economy, 10(1), 57–81.
Simintzi, E., Vig, V., & Volpin, P. (2015). Labor protection and leverage. Review of Financial Studies, 28(2), 561–591.
Turco, C. J. (2012). Difficult decoupling: Employee resistance to the commercialization of personal settings. American Journal of Sociology, 118(2), 380–419.
Vohs, K. D., Mead, N. L., & Goode, M. R. (2006). The psychological consequences of money. Science, 314(5802), 1154–1156.
Zelizer, V. A. (1989). The social meaning of money. American Journal of Sociology, 95(2), 342–377.
Zelizer, V. A. (2011). Economic lives: How culture shapes the economy. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Zelizer, V. A. (2012). How I became a relational economic sociologist and what does that mean? Politics and Society, 40(2), 145–174.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Styhre, A. (2020). Social Norms in the Developer Community: The Ambiguity of Money-Making. In: Indie Video Game Development Work. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45545-3_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45545-3_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-45544-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-45545-3
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)