Yearly Chart: The Year’s Top-Selling Game at Retail Ranked by Unit Sales—2013,” VGChartz 2014; http://www.vgchartz.com/yearly/2013/Germany/
21 ESA, Entertainment Software Association: “Essential Facts about the Computer and Video Game Industry 2013,” April 2014, p. 12 http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2014.pdf
22 Illek, Christian P.: “Gaming in Deutschland,” Bitkom, August 13, 2013; http://www.bitkom.org/files/documents/BITKOM_Praesentation_Gaming_PK_130813(1).pdf
23 ESA: “Essential Facts about the Computer and Video Game Industry 2013,” p. 5; Illek: “Gaming in Deutschland.”
24 ESA: “Essential Facts about the Computer and Video Game Industry 2013,” pp. 2-3.
25 N. N.: “Infographic: The German Games Market,” Newzoo: Games Market Research, January 6, 2014; http://www.newzoo.com/infographics/infographic-german-games-market/
26 BIU, Bundesverband Interaktive Unterhaltungssoftware: “Altersverteilung,” 2014; http://www.biu-online.de/de/fakten/reichweiten/altersverteilung.html
27 ESA: “Essential Facts about the Computer and Video Game Industry 2014,” p. 13.—In most other countries, the virtualization of distribution is lagging behind. For example, in Germany the market share of downloaded PC and console games grew from 7% in 2010 to 32% in 2014. (BIU, Bundesverband Interaktive Unterhaltungssoftware: “Kauf digitaler Spiele per Download,” 2014; http://www.biu-online.de/fileadmin/user_upload/bilder/marktzahlen/2014/Marktzahlen_-_2014_gesamt/Infografik_-_Kauf_per_Download/BIU_Infografik-4_Kauf_per_Download.PNG
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
