scholarly journals Lost in the App Store: The Political Economy of the Canadian Game App Economy

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
David B. Nieborg ◽  
Chris Young ◽  
Daniel Joseph
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Emerging Technology ◽  
Digital Transformation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
App Store ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Game Industry ◽  
App Economy ◽  
Le Canada

This commentary discusses the political economy of apps. The authors found that Canadian-made game apps are notably absent in the Canadian App Store. This should be both worrying and surprising, as Canada has a relatively sizable game industry. While policy conversations on digital transformation focus on emerging technology, the authors point toward the power and politics of digital platforms as one of the key issues preventing growth in the Canadian digital economy.Ce commentaire discute de l’économie politique des applications. Les auteurs ont observé que les applis de jeu fabriqués au Canada sont absents de l’App Store canadien. Cette situation devrait surprendre et inquiéter, puisque le Canada a une industrie du jeu relativement grande. Les conversations sur les politiques relatives à la transformation numérique portent en grande partie sur les technologies émergentes, mais les auteurs tiennent à souligner que le pouvoir et les politiques relatifs aux plateformes numériques sont parmi les raisons clés pour lesquelles l’économie numérique au Canada ne croît pas autant qu’elle le pourrait.

scholarly journals App Imperialism: The Political Economy of the Canadian App Store

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512093329 ◽  
Author(s):  
David B. Nieborg ◽  
Chris J. Young ◽  
Daniel Joseph
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Business Studies ◽  
App Store ◽  
The Us ◽  
Complex Ecosystem ◽  
Game Industry ◽  
Spatial Trajectories ◽  
App Economy

To critically engage with the political economy of platformization, this article builds on the concepts of platform capitalism and platform imperialism to situate platforms within wider historical, economic, and spatial trajectories. To investigate if platformization leads to the geographical redistribution of capital and power, we draw on the Canadian instance of Apple’s iOS App Store as a case study. App stores are situated in a complex ecosystem of markets, infrastructures, and governance models that the disparate fields of business studies, critical political economy of communications, and platform studies have begun to catalog. Through a combination of financial and institutional analysis, we ask if Canadian game app developers are effective in generating revenue within their own national App Store. Given Canada’s vibrant game industry one would expect Canadian developers to have a sizable economic footprint in the burgeoning app economy. Our results, however, point toward the US digital dominance and, therefore, we suggest the notion of app imperialism to signal the continuation, if not reinforcement of existing instances of economic inequalities and imperialism.

scholarly journals APP IMPERIALISM: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE CANADIAN APP STORE

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Nieborg ◽  
Chris Young ◽  
Daniel Joseph
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical Material ◽  
Potential Growth ◽  
Value Capture ◽  
App Store ◽  
Intellectual Properties ◽  
App Economy

In this paper, we introduce the notion of app imperialism by exploring the political economy of the Canadian iOS App Store. Building on Dal Yong Jin's concept of "platform imperialism", we argue that US companies dominate global app stores through the systematic acquisition of capital resources. App imperialism marks the outsized economic footprint and influence of US companies in national app stores. Using a longitudinal financial dataset, we qualitatively coded the top-50 of revenue-generating game apps in April 2015 and 2016. Distinguishing between value creation (generating revenue) and value capture (appropriating profit) allowed us to determine the plight of Canadian app developers. While the Canadian App Store exhibits a large degree of source diversity, featuring a high number of active app developers, we found the ability of Canadian developers to both create and capture value negligible. US owned developers, publishers, parent-organizations, and intellectual properties, on the other hand, were overrepresented. These initial findings suggest that any potential growth in the Canadian app economy will be increasingly captured by US-owned companies. These results question the effectiveness of Canadian cultural policy frameworks, which have been particularly proactive in supporting Canada-based game studios. While our initial analysis offers just a temporal and regional snapshot of the App Store's political economy, it gestures towards broader critical material issues related to platform capitalism and app diversity.

Apps of Empire: Global Capitalism and the App Economy

2020 ◽  
pp. 155541202093782 ◽  
Author(s):  
David B. Nieborg
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mobile Platforms ◽  
Mobile Media ◽  
Game Industry ◽  
Capital Intensive ◽  
App Economy

This article interrogates Dyer-Witheford and De Peuter’s Games of Empire. Since its publication in 2009, the game industry evolved significantly, adding billions of players, dollars, and devices. One of the driving forces of this transformation has been the global diffusion of mobile media. This raises the question: Do mobile platforms and the app stores operated by Apple and Google allow for a radical departure from global hypercapitalism? This question will be explored by taking on three themes: shifts in labor, the political economy of platformization, and the capital-intensive mode of app production and circulation. Doing so addresses two gaps in Games of Empire’ s approach: a dearth of empirical economic analysis and the acknowledgment of work in critical platform studies and mainstream economics. It is concluded that rather than providing a staging ground for dissent or collective action, apps of empire signal the foreclosure of an exodus from global hypercapitalism.

The Political Economy of Attention

2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Morten Axel Pedersen ◽  
Kristoffer Albris ◽  
Nick Seaver
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Online Publication ◽  
The Political ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Moral Concern ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Political Economic

Attention has become an issue of intense political, economic, and moral concern over recent years: from the commodification of attention by digital platforms to the alleged loss of the attentional capacities of screen-addicted children (and their parents). While attention has rarely been an explicit focus of anthropological inquiry, it has still played an important if mostly tacit part in many anthropological debates and subfields. Focusing on anthropological scholarship on digital worlds and ritual forms, we review resources for colleagues interested in this burgeoning topic of research and identify potential avenues for an incipient anthropology of attention, which studies how attentional technologies and techniques mold human minds and bodies in more or less intentional ways. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Anthropology, Volume 50 is October 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

scholarly journals The Political Economy of Canada's Video and Computer Game Industry

2005 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Dyer-Witheford ◽  
Zena Sharman
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
New Media ◽  
Computer Games ◽  
Regional Distribution ◽  
Computer Game ◽  
The Political ◽  
Media Industry ◽  
Game Industry ◽  
Developmental Dynamics ◽  
Computer Game Industry

Abstract: Video and computer games are a burgeoning new media industry with global revenues rivaling those of film and music. This article, reporting on a three-year SSHRC-funded research project, analyzes the political economy of Canadian involvement in the interactive game business. After an overview of companies, ownership, markets and regional distribution, it discusses the developmental dynamics and contradictions of the Canadian industry in terms of capital, state, and labour. It concludes by reviewing different ways these interweaving forces may ‘play out’ and their implications for policy decisions affecting the Canadian video and computer game industry. Résumé : Les jeux électroniques sont une nouvelle industrie médiatique en plein essor dont les revenus mondiaux rivalisent avec ceux des industries du film et de la musique. Cet article, qui rend compte d’un projet de recherche de trois ans financé par le CRHS, analyse l’économie politique de la participation canadienne à l’industrie du jeu interactif. L’article – suivant une vue d’ensemble des compagnies, de leurs propriétaires, des marchés, et de la distribution régionale – traite des dynamiques du développement ainsi que des contradictions de l’industrie canadienne en fonction de capital, état et travail. En guise de conclusion, l’article passe en revue les diverses manières dont ces trois forces interreliées pourront évoluer et l’impact de celles-ci sur les décisions politiques portant sur l’industrie des jeux électroniques au Canada.

J. W. WRIGHT, JR., ED., The Political Economy of Middle East Peace: The Impact of Competing Trade Agendas (London: Routledge, 1999). Pp. 288. $85.00 cloth.

2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
EDWARD SAYRE
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
The Political ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
The Impact

It is testimony to the sad state of the study of economics in the Middle East that a work such as The Political Economy of Middle East Peace: The Impact of Competing Trade Agendas, edited by J. W. Wright, Jr., could be produced. This collection of essays attempts to shed light on the relationship between international economic relations and the peace process. The sloppy scholarship included in this volume would be inexcusable when looking at any other region, but it appears to be acceptable when analyzing Middle Eastern economies. Although this description is not characteristic of all of the essays in the volume, it diminishes the overall quality of this work to such a degree that it detracts from the some of the more enlightening and important papers that are included. For example, Laura Drake's careful examination of “A New Middle East Order” in the first chapter lays out the potential stumbling blocks and hurdles as the process of normalization between Arab states and Israel continues. Unfortunately, the next chapter, by Wright, primarily examines the same topic but almost completely ignores relevant data and scholarship critical to his thesis. While some chapters examine key issues and analyze nuances in the political economy of the Middle East peace process, this uneven and incongruous group of essays is of little value to policy-makers, academics, or students of Middle Eastern political economy.

Structure and Coherence in the Political Economy of Public Finance

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanley L. Winer ◽  
Walter Hettich
Keyword(s):  
Public Finance ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Median Voter ◽  
Collective Choice ◽  
Voter Model ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Median Voter Model ◽  
Key Issues

The article provides an outline of the economics of the public sector and of its structure when collective choice is regarded as an essential component of the analysis. It identifies the key issues that must be faced by political scientists and economists who insist that collective institutions cannot be ignored in research on taxation and public budgets. It also reviews various alternatives to the median voter model; these alternatives are frameworks that interpret public policies as equilibrium outcomes in a multidimensional setting.

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