Dr Jason Rutter

Jason Rutter is a Research Fellow at the Manchester Institute for Innovation Research (MIoIR) where he works primarily in the areas of leisure technologies (especially digital gaming) as well as counterfeiting and piracy of digital content. He has been involved in projects funded by the European Commission, Northern Ireland Office, NESTA, DTI and ESRC and published widely including the books Understanding Digital Games (2006, Sage) and Digital Game Industries (forthcoming, Ashgate) and special editions of Game Studies (2003) and Information, Communication and Society (2003). His recent projects include ‘Hidden Innovation in the Creative Sectors’ (NESTA), ‘Intellectual Property Theft and Organised Crime’ (NIO) and ‘Mobile Entertainment Industry and Culture’ (EC). He chaired the European Commission Marie Curie Conference ‘Putting the Knowledge Based Society into Practice’ (April 2006) and the international conferences ‘Mobile Entertainment: User Centred Perspectives’ (2004) and ‘Playing with the Future’ (2002) as well as running the ESRC-funded seminar series "DigiPlay: Experience and Consequence of Technologies of Leisure". He was the inaugural vice-president of the international Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA).

Research Interests

A sociologist, Jason's research and publication interests centre on the social aspects of Leisure Technologies especially issues of user innovation, consumption, and interaction within domestic spaces. These fall broadly into three empirical domains:

• Computer gaming and the games industry (see also www.digiplay.info)
• Consumption and Counterfeits
• Online communities and computer-mediated interaction
  

Research Projects

• Hidden Innovation in the Creative Sectors, NESTA
• IPTOC (Intellectual Property Theft and Organised Crime) Northern Ireland Office
• DigiPlay: Experience and Consequence of Technologies of Leisure, ESRC Seminars and Transdisciplinary Seminars Competition
• mGain (Mobile Entertainment Industry and Culture) European Commission
• Exploring the Effects of E-Commerce, Office of Science and Technology

Selected Publications

"Poca diversión: las barreras de las aficionados a los videojuegos/Not Much Fun: The constraining of female video gamers", ADOZ Journal of Leisure Studies, 2007, 31. pp.97-108.

"Playing the Game: performance in digital game audiences" in Gray, J., Sandvoss, C., and Harrington, C.L. (eds) Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, New York: New York University Press, 2007, pp.271-281

"Assessing Indirect Impacts of the EC Proposals for Video Regulation", RAND Europe/Ofcom, 2006.

Understanding Digital Games, London: Sage, 2006.

"Consumer Engagement with Counterfeit Goods", Report for the Organised Crime Task Force, Northern Ireland Office, 2005. (Executive Summary published as "Fake Nation?: A Study into an Everyday Crime" by the OCTF.)

A more complete list of my publications and conference presentations is also available.

PhD Supervision

I am particularly interested in supervising PhDs that engage with consumption, innovation or interaction in the following areas:

• Digital games, video games, computer games: Gamers as consumers and producers; gaming innovation; gaming communities (virtual, actual and imagined); gender and gaming.
• Leisure technologies: mobile phones; digital TV; integration of technologies into everyday routines; sociology of diffusion.
• Counterfeiting, piracy, peer-to-peer networks: Consumption of counterfeits; normalisation of counterfeiting; trust; negotiation of risk; peer-to-peer systems and electronic piracy; trust, brands and e-branding; theoretical understandings of trust.

Additional Information

Recent and ongoing activities include:

• The Digiplay Games Research bibliography - a resource of approximately 2000 research publications
• Presentation of "Pirates’ Gold: Consumers and the Counterfeiting of Electronic Media" at SPRU & CENTRIM's Collaborative Seminar Series
• Publication of Understanding Digital Games by Sage.
• Producing an edited collection from the Digital Game Industries workshop to be published by Ashgate.
• Organising and chairing the Marie Curie Conference "Putting the Knowledge Based Society into Practice".
• Presenting on trust and ecommerce to the Danish consumers' association.
• Research on the consumption of counterfeit goods funded by a trade and policy consortium led by the Northern Ireland Office.

Jason also ran the ESRC-funded seminar series "DigiPlay: Experience and Consequence of Technologies of Leisure" and chaired the conferences "Mobile Entertainment: User Centred Perspectives" and "Playing with the Future". He has edited special editions on digital gaming for "Game Studies" (2003) and "Information, Communication and Society" (2003) and until the end of 2005 was vice-president of the international Digital Game Research Association (DiGRA).

See also The Digiplay Initiative.

[There is also particularly unsettling 3D picture of me available.]

Contact Details

Rm: 8.06 Harold Hankins Building
E-mail: Jason.Rutter@manchester.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0) 161 275 6859

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CRIC has combined with PREST to form the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIoIR).

New book: Trust in Food, A Comparative and Institutional Analysis by Unni Kjaernes, Mark Harvey & Alan Warde.

CRIC Final Report to ESRC:"Main Report" and "CRIC Performance Indicators 1997-2006".

'Instituted Or Embedded? Legal, Fiscal and Economic Institutionalisation of Markets' by Mark Harvey

'Beyond Efficiency and Market Shares: Competition within the Finnish Games Industry' by Mirva Peltoniemi

'Accounting for Economic Evolution: Fitness and the Population Method' by Stan Metcalfe

'Innovation and Final Consumption: Social Practices, Instituted Modes of Provision and Intermediation' by Andrew McMeekin & Dale Southerton

'Alfred Marshall’s Mecca: Reconciling the Theories of Value and Development' by Stan Metcalfe