28 Campbell, Colin: “How League of Legends is Upending the Video Game Business,” October 24, 2014; http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/24/7061573/how-league-of-legends-is-upending-the-video-game-business
29 Cashmore, Pete: “FarmVille Surpasses 80 Million Users,” Mashable, February 20, 2010; http://mashable.com/2010/02/20/farmville-80-million-users/
30 On the controversy around FARMVILLE and Ian Bogost’s satire game COW CLICKER (2010) see Tanz, Jason: “The Curse of Cow Clicker: How a Cheeky Satire Became a Videogame Hit,” Wired, December 20, 2011; http://archive.wired.com/magazine/2011/12/ff_cowclicker/all/
31 See Ha, Anthony: “Zynga’s Pincus Says FarmVille Has Passed $1B In Total Player Purchases,” TechCrunch, February 4, 2013; http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/05/farmville-1-billion/
32 Long, Neil: “Two Billion Downloads? We’re Just Getting Started, Says Angry Birds Creator Rovio,” January 23, 2014; http://www.edge-online.com/features/two-billion-downloads-were-just-getting-started-says-angry-birds-creator-rovio/
33 Grubb, Jeff: “King: 93M Daily Candy Crush Saga Players, 500M installs, and $568M Profit in 2013,” VentureBeat, February 18, 2014; http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/18/candy-crush-saga-publisher-king-by-the-numbers-inforgraphic/
34 Koch, Cameron: “Free-to-Play Games Continue to Dominate the MMO Game Marketplace,” Techtimes, October 24, 2014; http://www.techtimes.com/articles/18666/20141024/free-to-play-games-continue-to-dominate-the-digital-video-game-marketplace.htm
35 N. N.: “Stats,” Kickstarter, November 28, 2014; https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats?ref=footer
36 N. N.: “Most Successful Crowdfunding Campaigns,” CrowdfundingBlog, October 29, 2014; http://www.crowdfundingblog.com/most-successful-crowdfunding-projects/
37 N. N.: Star Citizen Wiki, November 2014; http://starcitizen.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Citizen
38 https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals; as of August 5, 2015.
39 See for gamification below p. hereff.
40 See Freyermuth, Gundolf S.: “Der Big Bang digitaler Bildlichkeit: Zwölf Thesen und zwei Fragen,” in: Freyermuth, Gundolf S./Gotto, Lisa (ed.), Bildwerte: Visualität in der digitalen Medienkultur, Bielefeld: transcript 2013, pp. 287-333, here p. 293 ff.
41 See for example Zichermann, Gabe/Cunningham, Christopher: Gamification by Design: Implementing Game Mechanics in Web and Mobile Apps, Sebastopol, Calif.: O'Reilly Media 2011.
42 On the question regarding the most exciting development tendency in the game industry, the game developers Randy Smith and Josh Holmes answered with “the democratization of game development,” i.e., “the ‘democratization’ of game development and the rise of the indie developer.” (Cited after Fullerton, Tracy. Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games. Boca Raton: CRC Press/Taylor & Francis (Kindle edition) 2014, loc. 1800 und loc. 5148).
43 Beil, Benjamin/Freyermuth, Gundolf S./Gotto, Lisa: “Vorwort,” in: Beil, Benjamin/ Freyermuth, Gundolf S./Gotto, Lisa (ed.), New Game Plus: Perspektiven der Game Studies. Genres – Künste – Diskurse, Bielefeld: transcript 2015, pp. 7-24, here p. 8; the Cologne University of Applied Sciences has since been renamed TH Köln—University of Applied Sciences. (All quotes from German language sources have been translated for this edition.)
44 See Lämmert, Eberhard: “Germanistik – eine deutsche Wissenschaft,” in: Lämmert, Eberhard, et al. (ed.), Germanistik – eine deutsche Wissenschaft, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp Verlag 1967, pp. 7-41.
45 See Benjamin, Walter: “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility” (3rd version), in: Benjamin, Walter, et al. Selected Writings. 4 vols, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press 1996, vol. 3, pp. 251-283, here p. 281, note 42: “Film is the art form corresponding to the increased threat to life that faces people today.”
46 See, Arnold: The Social History of Art, 4 vols., London, New York: Routledge 1999 (*1951), p. 159.
47 See, for example, Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Simon/Smith, Jonas Heide/Tosca, Susana Pajares: Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction, New York: Routledge 2008; Mäyrä, Frans: An Introduction to Game Studies, London: SAGE (Kindle edition) 2008.
48 The Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian countries’ head start continues. In Germany the first university-level educational offerings are starting to arise. For German-language research, three more recent publications are: Beil, Benjamin: Game Studies: Eine Einführung, Red guide, Berlin: Lit 2013; Michael Hagner and Games Coop: Theorien des Computerspiels zur Einführung,