NO SECOND CHANCE FOR A FIRST IMPRESSION: THE ROLE OF AESTHETICS IN EARLY ACCESS VIDEO GAMES

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of aesthetics in early game development based on a quantitative analysis of 367 early access games. We identified the relationship between aesthetic perception in early video games reflected in the user reviews, comments, and subsequent positive and negative video game recommendations over time. We find that customer co-creation in product innovation is increasingly negative feedback over time when the game’s aesthetic early impression is perceived as negative. The implications for innovation management are that aesthetics design impacts the response to customer-ready prototypes. Managers should take the aesthetic design and user perception in early development into account and not delay the attention to aesthetics to a later product release stage.