Video games have emerged as one of the world’s fastest-growing industries. Although initially aimed at adults, video games have become an increasingly popular pastime among youth, with 90% of children playing video games today throughout the United States according to a Pew Research study...

This paper investigates how video game publishers’ choice of game release date is affected by the expected level of competition within the game’s product niche. We identify game niches by genre, age-appropriateness, a four week window cohort, publisher and console system. Our analysis is...

This research aims to probe the influence of online game endorsement on adolescent involvement and game purchase intention. Involvement means the perceived importance and interest stimulate. The high involvement means consumers will spend more time considering and collecting data in order to...

Games like EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot occasionally produce natural experiments in social science: situations that, through no intent of the designer, offer controlled variations on a phenomenon of theoretical interest. This paper examines two examples, both of which involve the theory of...

Big business plays cat & mouse with market regulators. Market participants try to avoid the competitive pressures that the regulators are working to keep up. Only if the latter play these games at least as cleverly as the former can we reap all the fruits of competition. A case in point is the...

Behavioural economists are increasingly understanding that humans are not completely self-interested or emotionless, but often exhibit “other-regarding” behaviour. We develop a game-theoretic approach in which players gain utility from their own material payoffs, but who also develop...