Ambidextrous Innovation and Game Market Fit Performance: Feedback from Game Testers

The dynamics of the market pose a challenge for the digital game industry. Game development firms must develop innovative games to satisfy game players’ ever-changing needs and sustain a suitable product/market fit. To realize such innovation, developers tend to adopt an ambidextrous approach that includes exploratory and exploitative activities to develop games. In addition, game development teams must rely on feedback from game testers to enhance development and meet game players’ needs. However, the effect of feedback on innovation is subject to debate. Some studies have proposed that feedback has potentially negative effects on creativity. Given the prevalence of ambidextrous innovation and the utilization of feedback from game testers, no study to date has investigated the effects of feedback on game development quality. A survey of 119 paired game producers and developers revealed that “feedback timing” from game testers positively enhances the relationship between ambidextrous innovation and a game’s final development performance, whereas “feedback specificity” impairs the effectiveness of ambidextrous innovation. This paper discusses the implications of this study.