The entire landscape of video games is very rewarding, but it is also very complex and competitive, especially for independent companies. By 2017, each day, more than twenty games were released on steam alone making it hard to stand out (Juul, 2019). According to SuperScale (2023), while also being competitive, the success rate in itself is very low. Whether it be at small studios or big companies, it is frequently agreed on the difficulty of producing and designing games (Schreier, 2017).
The emergent way of implementing strategy is better in such a complex environment where firms are independent. The strategy of the company plays a very important role for the survival of any company. Emergent strategy is the product of unplanned actions and initiatives, is more flexible and allows for adjustment of the goals that the organisation has been working on when other opportunities and priorities arise (Stobierski, 2020).
However, there is not a lot of studies relating directly to emergent strategy in relation to independent video game companies bearing such a huge financial and personal risk. Video games are a massive endeavour, and a lot of products go to waste. Producing a blockbuster title is very expensive as it takes several years for completion and may involve thousands of people as such titles can cost from 150 million (Dreunen, 2020). For small independent games, even though the financial commitment is incomparable to blockbuster titles, the stake is similar as small teams devote years of lives and every resource they have for the completion of these games (Dreunen, 2020).
Compared to other established entertainment industries, limited research has addressed how to create value for companies and consumers in the game industry (Marchand & Hennig-Thurau, 2013). According to Cabras et al. (2017), there is only a small number of studies which delve into challenges and issues faced by companies in the video game industry. The interaction between a creative vision and a suitable business model has resulted in the most successes in the games industry (Dreunen, 2020). Thus, by filling this gap, this research can help independent companies bring up their success rate.
The dissertation will explore on this question:
- How does emergent strategy help financially independent game companies in achieving commercially successful products?
It will further investigate these sub questions:
- How does emergent strategy differ from traditional strategy?
- What are some successful examples of independent studios that have used emergent strategies to create commercially successful products?
- What are the properties of emergent strategy mostly displayed by these companies?
- How does emergent strategy enable independent game studios to adapt to changes in consumer and industry preference?
The dissertation will start by looking into emergent strategy in depth and will cover things like the benefits on lower reliance on planning and hierarchical structure, benefits of experimental, learning based and bottom-up approach of running companies. It will also contrast with deliberate strategy. The research will then dive into its methodology which was done using a qualitative approach utilising secondary data. It will talk about the rationale behind using this method. It will also talk about data analysis and data collection. The research is done based on four companies as case studies: Valve, Supergiant Games, Hello Games and Rebellion. They will be analysed about how they practise emergent strategy and how it has helped them.
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