Exploring emergent co-creative narrative in a strategy video game brand

ABSTRACT

This research examines the concept of emergent narrative, located in Game Studies, and brand co-creation, located in Brand Management to bring together both disciplines to produce new understandings about both concepts, video games and their players. Two stages of research were conducted. It was found that players were taking part in brand co-creation behaviours by creating emergent narratives, some of which were quite elaborate. Although these emergent narratives provided no gameplay advantages, creators and other players reading them online derived enjoyment from them which enhanced their consumption of the video game brand. By innovatively bringing together two synergistic disciplines this research extends knowledge about video game media branding demonstrating how examining video game brands using concepts from multiple disciplines can provide rich and useful insights.

KEYWORDS:

• Brand management
• brand co-creation
• media brands
• emergent narrative
• video games

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to acknowledge the two anonymous reviewers whose comments and suggestions strengthened and improved the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jacqueline Burgess

Dr Jacqueline Burgess is an Associate Lecturer in International Business and the Program Coordinator of the Bachelor of Business (International Business) at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. Her research focuses on the brand management of narrative brands and has been published in multiple peer-reviewed journals including the European Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Consumer Marketing, the International Journal on Media Management and Game Studies.

Christian Jones

Dr Christian Jones is Professor of Interactive Media and the leader of the Engage Research Lab at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. His research focuses on human–computer interaction, interactive media, and affective computing. He leads multiple large-scale, collaborative projects and his research has been published in over 100 international, peer-reviewed conference and journal articles. His work has also been covered by various journalists in news outlets.