Community-based customer involvement for improving packaged software development

Many computer game developers have adopted network technologies for value-adding purposes at several stages of the corporate value chain. In this paper, we suggest that this adoption extends the current notion of developing e-commerce by including ongoing interaction with the consumers concerning what is being produced. On the basis of an interpretive case study, this paper outlines the process by which a Swedish computer game developer involved its customers in producing, testing, distributing, and marketing its online computer game Clusterball. Using Orlikowski’s (1999) notion of « internetworked organizations », the paper explores how this customer involvement was supported by the use of network technologies at every stage of the value chain, and it illustrates how this involvement can be understood as an important feature of future development of e-commerce in organizations. acm Categories: j.1, k.4.3, j.1, k.8.0.