Digital games and the rise of the platform economy in the Netherlands (1985–2020)

As young people spend more time online, digital communities define social contexts for the expression, validation and contestation of identities. Four out of ten people in the Netherlands game, while online communities for gaming now represent more activity on the web worldwide than social media sites. This project studies original historical material to trace the development of collective identity in gaming Dutch communities. Participatory gaming culture, or cultures in which users themselves produce content, is not a new practice for gaming. Hackers communities in the Netherlands have produced and circulated programmes for games since the 1980s. The central question of the research is therefore posed as ‘how did these early gamers enact gamer identity in the first software communities, and how has collective game identity been renegotiated through new modes of participation, such as the online games and game streaming?’ The difficulty of archiving game content is a barrier to the historical study of online gaming communities. Here, a dual approach to the research, using both machine learning techniques, in addition to qualitative research methods, is applied to sources such as consumer publications, web chats, archived gameplay and game streams to analyse expressions of membership, boundaries and belonging in the game community. Mainstreaming the game examines these expressions as the performance and negotiation of collective identity during rapid growth of active gaming communities in the Netherlands. The study provides insight into issues of access to and equality in creative communities on the web.