The impacts of cultural policy on gaming entrepreneurs in Shanghai: an entrepreneurial ecosystem approach

ABSTRACT

China’s cultural policy has been a key driver to the formation and development of the domestic digital game industry. In line with the nationwide promotion of “Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation” since 2015 (He et al., 2019), there has witnessed an increasing emphasis on entrepreneurship in the related cultural policies at the local level, especially in China’s major cities known for high-tech creative clusters. Focusing on the thriving gaming entrepreneurship in Shanghai, this article adopts an entrepreneurial ecosystem approach to examine the under-studied relationship between the creation of gaming ventures and the relevant set of cultural policy. Drawing on 33 gaming entrepreneur interviews complemented by policy content, this article provides rich accounts of how gaming entrepreneurs react to and reflect on the local cultural policy in relation to two key elements of the entrepreneurial ecosystem: financial capital availability and support services. The findings shed new light on creative autonomy and cultural policy in China.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural policy
• gaming entrepreneur
• entrepreneurial ecosystem
• Shanghai

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Incubator and accelerator are grouped together in this article because the majority of today’s incubators assume the role of accelerator as an organizational function and the boundary between incubator and accelerator is blurred in China.

2 Here the “trivial things” refer to required application documents, including owner’s ID card, business registration certificate, business tax sheet, and third-party evaluation report, among many others.

3 As the time of the interview, the average fee of outsourcing service for mobile game development in Shanghai was around 500,000 RMB (approx. 71,800 USD).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange: [Grant Number DD010-A-17].

Notes on contributors

Gejun Huang

Dr Gejun Huang is lecturer of journalism at Soochow University. His research has focused on the global game industry, media entrepreneurship, cultural policy and creative economy, and the sociocultural impacts of digital media technologies. He has published in peer-reviewed journals including International Journal of Communication, Chinese Journal of Communication, American Behavioral Scientist, and among others.