Livening up Video Games

Sammanfattning: Propelled by the introduction of the Internet, the video game industry has and is shifting towards increased service offerings. This has caused an emergence of new business- and release practices, determinant to allow for the opportunities presented by service based gaming; some built on fundamental "box products", others on subscription schemes. One quintessential business practice to this shift, that has gone largely without research, is the use and incorporation of live services. The purpose of this thesis is to provide the video game industry and academics alike with a foundational description of the components of live services, how it affects opportunities for co-creation with players and how it is motivated in relation to the industrial shift towards services. A qualitative, single case study (built from the basis of a two-company pre-study) was conducted through eleven (11) in-depth, semistructured interviews of video game company professionals at an internationally acclaimed video game company operating from Stockholm as part of an international video game company group. The research questions were approached using grounded theory methodology and a systematic combining approach. The research's findings resulted in a proposed model of the live service practice, as well as thorough reviews of the video game industry's shift towards services through the use of live services against theories of co-creation and servitization. Increased opportunities of interaction between players and video game companies were found to provide opportunities for co-creation through live services, and motivational factors of the shift towards services through live services seemed to align with the factors described in servitization, barring an additional factor of expectations on the video game industry. While live services still warrant future research, this thesis is expected to have contributed both to industrial understanding of the live service practice, and directions from where to launch more in-depth research on live services, co-creation and servitization in the industry.