Creativity Machines: How Video Game Hardware Characteristics Influence Software Variety
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- In writing this thesis, I explored the following research questions: What is the relationship between a console’s design characteristics and the types of video games developers tend to create for it? Do increases in hardware capabilities (i.e., processing power and storage capacity) correspond to increases in the creativity of video game developers, as reflected by increased software variety? Is there a relationship between increased software variety and console sales? Most specifically, this thesis evaluated the hypothesis that unconventional hardware corresponds to increased developer creativity. I found that ‘unconventional’ consoles (i.e., consoles that upended preexisting hardware paradigms in one or more ways) corresponded to increased genre variety, but processing power and media storage capacity had little correlation to genre variety. I also identified a correlation between genre variety and console unit sales: consoles with greater genre variety tended to outsell consoles with lower genre variety.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | 2016 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Evans, Brandon |
|---|---|
| Primary advisor | Crum, Poppy |
Subjects
| Subject | Brandon Evans |
|---|---|
| Subject | Stanford University |
| Subject | Program in Science Technology and Society |
| Subject | STS |
| Subject | Honors Thesis |
| Subject | Video Game |
| Subject | Software Variety |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Collection
Stanford University, Program in Science, Technology and Society, Honors Theses
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