Computer games and organizations are becoming increasingly interwoven in the 21st century. Sophisticated computer games connected by networks are turning into spaces for organizing. Therefore, it may not be surprising that conventional organizations are now scrounging these games for novel ways to enhance efficiency. The result is the formation of game/organization hybrids; uneasy recontextualizations of partly incompatible ideas, values and practices. We begin this essay by elucidating what it is socially that makes something a game by exploring the notion’s anthropological foundations. We then introduce two examples of actual game/organization hybrids; raiding in computer games and gamification in formal organizations. We conclude by discussing the implications of such hybridization and suggest venues for how organization and management scholars can benefit from studying computer games and theories of play.

Predatory journals are Open Access journals of highly questionable scientific quality. Such journals pretend to use peer review for quality assurance, and spam academics with requests for submissions, in order to collect author payments. In recent years predatory journals have received a lot of negative media. While much has been said about the harm that such journals cause to academic publishing in general, an overlooked aspect is how much articles in such journals are actually read and in particular cited, that is if they have any significant impact on the research in their fields. Other studies have already demonstrated that only some of the articles in predatory journals contain faulty and directly harmful results, while a lot of the articles present mediocre and poorly reported studies. We studied citation statistics over a five-year period in Google Scholar for 250 random articles published in such journals in 2014, and found an average of 2,6 citations per article and that 60 % of the articles had no citations at all. For comparison a random sample of articles published in the approximately 25,000 peer reviewed journals included in the Scopus index had an average of 18,1 citations in the same period with only 9 % receiving no citations. We conclude that articles published in predatory journals have little scientific impact.

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This article analyzes specific characteristics of value created through digital scarcity and blockchain-proven ownership in cryptogames. Our object of study is CryptoKitties, the first instance of a blockchain-based game that has garnered media recognition and financial interest. The objective of this article is to demonstrate the limits of scarcity in value construction for owners of CryptoKitties tokens, manifested as breedable virtual cats. Our work extends the trends set out by earlier cryptocurrency studies from the perspective of cultural studies. For the purpose of this article, we rely on open blockchain analytics such as DappRadar and Etherscan, as well as player-created analytics, backed by a one-year-long participant observation period in the said game for research material. Combining theoretical cryptocurrency and Bitcoin studies, open data analysis, and virtual ethnography enables a grounded discussion on blockchain-based game design and play.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the ways in which information acts as a commodity in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), and how players pay for items and services with information practices. Design/methodology/approach – Through meta-theoretical analysis of the game environment as a set of information systems, one of retrieval and one social, the paper shows how players’ information practices influence their access to game content, organizational status and relationship to real-money trade. Findings – By showing how information trading functions in MMORPGs, the paper displays the importance of information access for play, the efficiency of real money trade and the significance of information practice -based services as a relatively regular form of payment in virtual worlds. Players furthermore shown to contribute to the information economy of the game with the way in which they decide not to share some information, so as to prevent others from a loss of game content value due to spoilers. Originality/value – The subject, despite the popularity of online games, has been severely understudied within library and information science. The paper contributes to that line of research, by showing how games function as information systems, and by explaining how they, as environments and contexts, influence and are influenced by information practices.