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.