The Game Giants and the “Frat Culture” Crisis: A Three-Way Crisis Management Comparison within the Game Industry

Within the game industry, systematic issues regarding toxic work environments, sexual misconduct, and gender discrimination have been brought to light within the “frat culture” crises. Three major game development studios triggered the same “frat culture” crisis between 2018 and 2022 after the development of the #MeToo movement on social media. Crisis communication in the juvenile game industry and digital environments remain two academically unexplored areas. Using the Situational Crisis Communication theory and the Social-Mediated Crisis Communication, this research examines how different game companies handled the “frat culture” crisis and how the public reacted to it. A thematic analysis was used to answer the research question and sub-questions. To analyse the companies’ conducted crisis communication strategies, data was collected from the corporate perspective. The data consisted of 47 written materials (31 public statements, 6 e-mails, 6 tweets, 2 interviews, 1 letter, and 1 Reddit post) and revealed the five themes of reputational mending, the promise of change, accountability, rapport building, and lowering crisis intensity within the crisis communication of the three companies. To identify how the stakeholders made sense of the corporate response, data was also collected from the stakeholder perspective. The stakeholders were identified as employees, victims, consumers and shareholders. The data consisted of 450 tweets and comments (400 tweets and 50 Reddit comments). The seven identified themes were the themes of leadership accountability, diminished trust, inaction over time, scepticism toward authenticity, support for the company, support for stakeholders, and lack of involvement. The more favoured crisis communication by the public contained themes of accountability, reputational mending, and the promise of change. The less favoured crisis communication contained solely the themes of reputational mending and lowering crisis intensity. The findings suggest that the SCCT can be expanded in multiple ways. The first recommendation is to start considering the crisis timeline to account for crisis developments. Especially in cultural crises, problems require slow, long-term solutions and developments within the crisis can influence the effectiveness of consequential crisis communication. Secondly, this research found ways to expand the SCCT’s rebuild strategies by suggesting strategies that convey the themes of the promise of change, reputational mending, and accountability. The practical implications of this research suggest that appropriate crisis response strategies at the beginning of a cultural crisis can provide more time to solve the crisis, but inadequate actions to solve the crisis can lead to the reduced effectiveness of crisis response strategies. Based on the Social-Mediated Crisis Communication model, reporters for digital news outlets were identified as the influential social media creators who frequently reveal new information to the social media followers during the crisis. These consequently create new developments within the crisis such as an escalation or a shift in public opinion. In order to properly control the public opinion, controlling the information flow towards these influential social media creators is of high importance for companies engaging in crisis communication.