TY - JOUR

T1 - The professional identity of gameworkers revisited

T2 - A qualitative inquiry on the case example of German professionals.

AU - Wimmer, Jeffrey

AU - Sitnikova, Tatiana

PY - 2012

Y1 - 2012

N2 - The phenomena of computer games and the plethora of game cultures have already been drawing attention of researchers for many years, whereas the people behind computer games – the so called gameworkers – undeservingly remained in the shadows until quite recently. The lack of information about this workforce and its professional identity makes this research object especially interesting. The analysis relies on a pilot study about the issue of the professional identity of gameworkers, which aimed to dig deeper with the means of qualitative research. During that project nine German gameworkers were interviewed and an attempt to give an in-depth description of their professional identity was made. The study shows that the respondents have a very strong coherence with their profession and perceive themselves as a part of their profession and the team/studio they work with/at. The most salient reason for this is the deep interest the respondents have in computer games (for both making and playing games).

AB - The phenomena of computer games and the plethora of game cultures have already been drawing attention of researchers for many years, whereas the people behind computer games – the so called gameworkers – undeservingly remained in the shadows until quite recently. The lack of information about this workforce and its professional identity makes this research object especially interesting. The analysis relies on a pilot study about the issue of the professional identity of gameworkers, which aimed to dig deeper with the means of qualitative research. During that project nine German gameworkers were interviewed and an attempt to give an in-depth description of their professional identity was made. The study shows that the respondents have a very strong coherence with their profession and perceive themselves as a part of their profession and the team/studio they work with/at. The most salient reason for this is the deep interest the respondents have in computer games (for both making and playing games).

KW - Media and communication studies

KW - culture of production

KW - game development

KW - game industry

KW - media identity

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 6

SP - 153

EP - 169

JO - Eludamos - Journal for Computer Game Culture

JF - Eludamos - Journal for Computer Game Culture

SN - 1866-6124

IS - 1

ER -