Abstract

Current mass media policy and regulation in Western Europe is primarily state‐based and increasingly based on the presumption that a competitive market will maximise individual choice and diversity. Policy interventions are primarily justified in terms of specific market failures including concentration of producers in the marketplace, the need to financially reward content developers financially for their work and issues related to distribution bottlenecks.1 Nevertheless, it is clear that at the national and European levels, public interest and cultural arguments also inform policy development and regulation. New media, including online and offline digital games, represent a new area for policy makers at the national and international levels. This chapter aims to contribute to our understanding of how digital games operate as markets and as social and cultural activities in order to inform discussions about the need for policy interventions.