Analysis on the evolution and innovation of online game industry using meta-frontier analysis

The game industry has made great progress in the recent decade, and recently other layers in theinformation and communication technology ecosystem affect the innovation and evolution ofthe game industry with the emergence of the Internet and online games. This paper estimatesthe changes in efficiency by data envelopment analysis and meta-frontier analysis in order toinvestigate how the online game industry evolves. As a result, there were enterprises that liftedup the production function of the game industry by innovation when the external factors such asdiffusion of the broadband Internet network and mobile Internet environment affected the gameindustry. The result implies that the steady increment of meta-frontier efficiency means that theindustry is growing by innovation or imitation, or both.