| With the continuous upgrading of the Internet and information technology,the closely related game industry has also ushered in a booming development,which has had a huge impact in economic,social and cultural aspects.The rapid rise of the game industry has led to a change in the public demand for games,and the higher demand for game quality has given rise to a new wave of cooperation in the global game industry.In this context,global game developers are establishing more and more virtual development teams with the help of high-speed networks to develop game products through in-depth cooperation beyond geographical space.At present,the game industry is an important field in China’s digital creative industry,and its development status and business model have been thoroughly explored in the academic circles,while the exploration of its spatial attributes from the perspective of economic geography is slightly insufficient.To this end,this paper draws on the research progress of creative industries,global production networks and city networks,and based on the 2013-2021 game approval data released by the State Press and Publication Administration and GPO and the Chinese game development data included in the international professional game website Mobygames,it portrays the city cooperation network of China’s game industry from a comprehensive perspective of Chinese city cooperation and global city cooperation,and deeply analyzes the spatial structural characteristics and evolutionary trends of the city networks formed based on game project cooperation.Finally,combining with the multidimensional proximity analysis framework,we explore the influence mechanisms of the game cooperation networks on both national and global scales in terms of four dimensions of proximity,including geography,institution,network and economy,and city attributes.The main findings of this paper are as follows:(1)The Chinese game industry cooperation network has experienced three stages of development,including the early development stage(2013-2015),the rapid growth stage(2016-2018)and the high-quality development stage(2019-2021),and has become quite large,with the number of city nodes and city links increasing significantly,from 30 to 90 for the former and from 101 to 671 for the latter.However,the cooperation network of Chinese game industry is dominated by vertical cooperation,and the share of horizontal cooperation is relatively low.Guangzhou-Xiamen,Guangzhou-Shenzhen and BeijingShanghai city pairs occupy the main position in the horizontal cooperation links,and take Guangzhou and Shenzhen cities in the Pearl River Delta as the core nodes.(2)The spatial unevenness of the vertical cooperation network of China’s game industry is remarkable,showing an overall development pattern of intensive cooperation in eastern cities and sparse cooperation in western cities.Network high-centric cities have obvious spatial directionality,and eastern cities such as Beijing,Shanghai,Guangzhou and Hangzhou dominate the network,and the network has merit-based connectivity,and the cities of Beijing,Shanghai and Shenzhen are also the preferred targets for game production cooperation.Finally,the analysis of the calculation results of Nationalization Index of the cities that are important in the game cooperation network reveals that the indices of major cities such as Hangzhou,Shenzhen and Guangzhou range from positive to negative,indicating that the game industry cooperation network changes from predominantly intracity linkages to a tendency to develop cooperation between cities.(3)The cities of the Global Scale Gaming Partnership are characterized by a stable urban pattern and the "monopoly effect" of American cities.The game cooperation network can be divided into three cooperation models: Chinese cities undertake development and foreign publishing,Chinese cities are responsible for publishing and foreign countries are responsible for development,and Chinese cities only undertake the operation link,with distinctive features between different models.Among them,the network of the cooperation model of Chinese cities developing-foreign cities responsible for publishing is more sparse,in which the company’s headquarters is mostly used as an agent to carry out game export activities directly,while the company chooses the appropriate market to launch according to the type of product.This cooperation model of foreign city k development-Chinese city publishing and operation produces fewer links,and this model is reflected in: domestic game enterprises(Tencent,Netease and Miha Yu)developing game products and publishing and operating them in China through overseas acquisitions and self-built studios,and Chinese companies publishing and operating foreign game products directly.The model in which Chinese cities only undertake the operation part is the most dominant cooperation model at present,which is mainly characterized by Chinese companies acquiring and importing foreign games and publishing and operating them in China.(4)The results of the proximity analysis show that at the national scale,geographical proximity and network proximity are important factors that promote cooperation between domestic game industries.However,at the global scale,the role of geographical proximity is not significant,while institutional and network proximity are the key factors that promote cooperation between China and foreign cities in the game industry.Finally,the effect of economic proximity differs between the national and global scales,with its effect being more pronounced in the global-scale game cooperation network and weaker in the nationalscale game cooperation network.Based on the above conclusions,policy recommendations are put forward:(1)Focus on the radiation and driving role of core cities such as Shanghai,Beijing and Guangzhou,and encourage core cities to actively provide other cities with production factors such as game technology,capital and creative talents,so as to promote the overall development of the domestic game industry;(2)encourage cities with better game industry foundation to combine their comparative advantages,strengthen ties with core cities,and promote the development and growth of local industries;(3)build cross-cultural exchange platforms,promote inter-city exchanges and cooperation,and create a cultural soft environment for transnational flow of knowledge according to local conditions;(4)support small and medium-sized game enterprises to cooperate at sea,explore the establishment of comprehensive and diverse production cooperation models,and comprehensively enhance the innovation and international competitiveness of China’s game productsBy introducing the unique perspective of cross-regional(city)cooperative network relationship of digital creative production into economic geography research,this paper makes up for the lack of attention to digital creative production in current city network research and provides scientific guidance for promoting the high-quality development of China’s game industry and its overseas market development. |
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