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This thesis sheds light on the social relationships, work practices and identities that shape the small scale sector of independent game production. Harnessing elements of the Production of Culture and Cultural Industries/Work perspectives, it aims to clarify the specifics of independent game production and its relationship with the large-scale sector of the industry. Drawing on a multi-sided ethnography, the thesis captures gamework practices, motivations, ideas and conventions deployed in a diverse range of online and physical spaces where independent developers interact. Given the complex relationships and messiness found in the industry, the results of the thesis initially clarify general aspects, characterising both the corporate structure of the games industry and its independent sector. It then examines the cultures that inform independent work as well as emergent 'indie' praxis. After a historical review of the digital games industry, the thesis addresses how the corporate structure of the industry has created a viable game producing field, with a highly rationalised but not unproblematic process of game production. The independent sector is then analysed in relation to this material culture. The thesis discusses the technologic affordances, structural relationships, market approach and organisational forms supporting the production of independent games. It also examines the motivations, ethics and general culture informing independent developers work, as well as the emergence of independent networked scenes as social spaces where creative, organisational, technical and cultural aspects of independent game production are shaped. The analysis of empirical evidence reveals how the uneven struggle to control or access the means for game production, distribution and reproduction, in both retail and digital distribution business models, shapes the material conditions of the small scale sector game production. The thesis highlights the relationship between production, independent developers' preferences, and their identity as 'indies' as central in understanding how this novel sector of the games industry is being structured. By understanding both the structure and informal practices of independent production, this research offers novel insights in this under-researched area, insights that reveal the intricacies of processes of social change and cultural diversification within the digital games industry as a whole.

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Philosophy

There have been recent contributions to the world city literature and the new economic geography literature that have focused on city connectivity and practicebased research, through concepts such as city actor-networks, relational geographies and project-led enquiries. As this literature is developing, this thesis aims to analyse and contribute to it by providing an empirical focus in two main themes that have so far been marginalised in these literatures – the city of Sydney, and the cultural industries. An alternative conceptualisation of world cities, namely ‘new urbanism’, which employs Actor-Network Theory, will be utilised in this thesis to ask the question, what are the actants of Sydney’s cultural industries (specifically the film and TV production industry), and how are they enrolled to create the spacing and timing of Sydney’s actor-networks? By answering this question, this thesis will contribute to the knowledge in three ways: theoretically, by adding weight to the alternative concepts of new urbanism and relational economic geographies; empirically, by studying two themes that have been hitherto underdeveloped in the existing literature; and methodologically, through new developing empirical agendas that cover the quantification of Sydney’s world city network and ANT-inspired ethnographic, ‘project-based’ enquiry.

This thesis focuses on the skateboarding industry in China as both a youth subculture and a cultural industry. I am investigating the transition between the two and examining how the emerging skateboarding industry operates through detailed analysis of the feelings, motivations and meanings attributed to it by its participants and the emerging strata of cultural workers. In order to achieve this research objective, this thesis has positioned the analysis in a triangle of forces between the development of Chinese skateboarding culture, the emerging skateboarding cultural industry and government interventions. This ethnographic study takes into account distinctive characters in the development of Chinese skateboarding communities that signify continuities inside contemporary Chinese youth cultures. I argue that such continuity is still embedded in the organisation of the Chinese skateboarding industry as a cultural industry, in both subcultural and corporate entrepreneurial practices. Moreover, this thesis contributes to ongoing discussions in the field of not only cultural studies but also of the political economic analysis of cultural/creative industries by examining the dynamic incorporations at play between the commercial and governmental forces at the centre of current debate around the inclusion of skateboarding in the Olympic Games, and the consequences of the sportisation of skateboarding in mainstream economic structures. Last but not least, this research captures the working conditions of the cultural labourers who are at the forefront of shaping and reshaping the Chinese skateboarding industry.

L’actualité socio-économique montre la forte importance qu’ont pris les termes « entrepreneuriat » ou « startup » dans les discours politiques et économiques. Sous l’impulsion des politiques publiques dans le cadre d’une idéologie de la « révolution entrepreneuriale », l’environnement financier dans lequel se développent les jeunes entreprises évolue. Basées sur un travail de terrain mené auprès de jeunes entreprises des TIC et s’inspirant particulièrement des travaux menés sur les industries culturelles en sciences de l’information et de la communication, ces recherches questionnent l'évolution et les enjeux des politiques publiques françaises en matière de soutien aux jeunes entreprises. Grâce à l’étude des différents dispositifs de soutien et de leur mise en complémentarité, nous montrons, dans la première partie, la place centrale que prend la sphère financière dans les conditions d’émergence des jeunes entreprises, avec un soutien réglementaire et financier majeur apporté par les politiques publiques. En nous appuyant sur les travaux menés sur la financiarisation des grandes entreprises, nous montrons que les mouvements de concentration touchent aussi les jeunes entreprises. Bien qu’il y ait des éléments de cohérence entre la financiarisation des grandes entreprises et le phénomène que nous mettons en lumière, ceux-ci se distinguent par le recours aux récits organisationnels comme facteurs d’objectivation. En étudiant la filière du jeu vidéo mobile et plus particulièrement une entreprise que nous avons accompagnée dans différentes campagnes de levée de fonds entre 2012 et 2015, la seconde partie de ce travail de thèse questionne l’impact de cette financiarisation sur le fonctionnement des jeunes entreprises. Nous mettons en lumière comment le recours à la sphère financière et la prédominance de l’idéologie de la valeur actionnariale pèse sur les stratégies des entreprises. Ainsi la financiarisation contraint les jeunes entreprises à l’adoption de modes de développement spécifiques et accentue les tendances industrialisantes. Les impacts de la financiarisation sur les jeunes entreprises semblent enfin dessiner les traits d’un idéal-type de la jeune entreprise financiarisée, une conception idéologisée de l’entreprise : la startup. / The socio-economic actuality is filled with examples showing the importance that the words entrepreneurship and startups have taken in political and economic discourses. Driven by policy makers and influenced by the « entrepreneurial revolution” ideology, the financial framework in which young companies venture is evolving. Based on a study on young companies in the ICT sectors, and strongly inspired by the previous works on cultural industries, this research seek to question the stakes of an evolving French policy towards young companies. By studying various funding schemes and their complementarity, we show in the first section the central role that the financial sphere has taken in the conditions of young venture’s emergence, with a major financial support of public policy. Using academic research on financialisation, we show that concentration movements also apply to young companies. Although many elements plead for an important coherency between the financialisation of big companies and the phenomenon we point at, the financialisation of young companies seems to characterize itself by the use of growth narratives as objectivation factor. Through an analysis of the mobile game sector and more especially a company we adviced in various fundraising campaigns between 2012 and 2015, the second section questions the impact of financialisation on young companies’ development. We show how the recourse to the financial sphere and the dominance of the shareholder value ideology impacts the companies’ strategies. Therefore, financialisation forces young companies into the adoption of specific development strategies and emphasize the industrialization tendencies. In that study, appear the traits of an ideal-type of the financialised young company, an ideological conception of venture creation: the startup.

The trend of globalization in 20th century and Asian financial crisis shocked or, from some scholars¡¦ viewpoint, even ended the East Asian model of economic development, which challenged the role of state. However, according to the concept of ¡¥monopoly rent¡¦ by David Harvey, culture is based on countries, history, nations, and identities. These elements are all related to state closely. Therefore, in the era of globalization, the role of state will not disappear, but be transformed. The thesis will emphasize the role of Korean government in developing cultural industries and will discuss the national policies since 1998 after Korea recovered from its imminent bankruptcy. Korea was nearly bankrupted in the Asian financial crisis in 1997. In 1998, Korean government adopted cultural industry as a national strategic industry. It introduced a bundle of plans, policies, laws, subsidies, and established related official departments to benefit enterprises and people and promote other industries. The strategies re-established national economy successfully; moreover, the ¡§Korean Wave¡¨ was formed and became a trend in Asia. Furthermore, the thesis starts from reviewing Korean history, including Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism from China, colonial culture from Japan, and Western culture from American armies. From the context of penetrating foreign culture influence, the thesis points out the components of Korean cultures, and uncovers Koreans¡¦ national and cultural identities, formation of nationalism, and global strategies of cultural industries.

Mobile Guide System has usually applied to enclosed spaces such as museums or exposition halls, but the prosperity of internet has made mobile application a trend. Then how it could be possible to make good use of mobile guide system in order to strengthen the dispersion of culture values, vibrate industrial economy and extend the life span of local culture industries so that culture and technology can develop mutual effects. The first stage of this research adopts discovery research to explain the concep-tual framework of local culture industries and mobile guide system and also uses Technology Acceptance Model(TAM) for research while the extended local culture value and consuming information values act as external factors to mobile guide sys-tem¡¦s Media Richness Theory(MRT). The second stage uses positive and qualitative research method to analyze the affecting factors to behavior intention of tourists from Anping Harbor National Historical Park about the mobile guide system applying to local culture industries. The total research tests are 250 copies and the effective tests are 226 copies. The research discovers that tourists have evolved from traditionally receiving information after arriving at the destination to collecting travling information beforehand. In the future, tourists would immediately receive information during traveling. This research considers that the development of local culture industries should acquire local culture values and local consuming values, which would strengthen the behavior intention of using mobile guide system. This discovery points out that mobile guide system can enhance the traveling happiness of tourists and lower searching cost. The information from tourist centers would be considered as one kind of hygiene factors and the messages passed from mobile guide system could be actively received by tourists to form different motivation in travel marketing and satisfaction.

Abstract Under the trends of the globalization and symbol consumption, the creative industries from kownledge economy become the opportunity of Taiwan development in the future. Take a broad view of the evolution of Taiwan creative industries in recent years, although the name ' cultural industry ' based on the community build is close for 'creative industries' from Britain, these are two different development concept. Because of some misunderstands, it reduce effect of the industry popularize to cause, this becomes the proposition cared about most in this research too. The purpose of research is probes into Taiwan regional ' cultural industry ' and difference of ' creative industries '¡Bprobes into the characteristic of creative industries, and get the strategy of the new product development in the creativity industries. This research choose the craft industry, and the method is case study research , with the analysis of secondary data and the interview. The conclusion part, There are eight items in analysis including ' the industries with high risk '¡B' possess the plural skill group ', ' create the goods which accord with the market ', ' with high regular costs and low costs with making again ', ' people create for means getting scarce ', ' manage risk by means of the enterprise ', ' diversifying profit ', 'technology is key '.and the new product in development is ¡uMr. Bliss¡v.

In the late 90’s the creative industries emerged as a new concept to aggregate industries whose products were primarily based on creative inputs and were subject to intellectual property. In the field of media studies, the creative industries emerges as an attempt to understand a segmented and convergent media environment, and account for the impacts of new technologies of information and communication on society. The creative industries are considered key industries in the information society due to its reliance on knowledge and information. As a consequence many countries, regions and cities adopted plans and strategies to attract and/or develop creative industries in their territories hoping to foster local economic development. This adoption is evident not only at core cities and regions, but also at non-core places that are hoping to become a significant node in the information society. This dissertation investigates such a case of a non-core city, via the analysis of the core media related creative industries in the city of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. The analysis of Salvador’s core media related creative industries indicates the importance of the logic of proximity/agglomeration and concentration for the creative industries, and also indicates how a non-core city incorporates the concept the creative industries and the media related creative industries into its development planning and economic development strategy. / text