The Game Industry From Breaking Into the Game Industry By Ernest Adams.

The Game Industry

From

Breaking Into the Game Industry

By Ernest Adams

Fact #1

The game industry is not a technology business, but an entertainment business with a technology component.

New technology certainly helps build bigger and better games, but if there were no advances in technology for a while, The publishers would continue to produce new products. That’s because this is an entertainment business, and it’s driven by creativity as well as technology.

Fact #2

The game business in the US and Europe has a seasonal cycle based on Christmas.

Nearly 50 percent of the game industry’s revenues come from pre-Christmas sales, and this imposes a schedule on game development for the rest of the year. Only sports games ship at times that parallel the sport that they are simulating.

Tracing a Game to it’s SourceSubcontractor Subcontractor

Developer

Publisher

Distributor

Retailer

Customer Customer

The Customer

The customer is someone that wants to nbuy a video game (duh!) You’re probably one yourself. Video games normally give about 20-40 hours’ worth of entertainment – some many more than that – which means that the cost of the entertainment is $1-2 an hour. That’s a pretty good rate of return since you can go on playing the video game for weeks and your friends can play it too.

The Retailer

Most of the time, the customer buys the game from a retailer, although it’s becoming more common for people to order games directly from the publisher. The retailer has bought the video game from a publisher or distributor for a wholesale price that’s about half the manufacturer’s suggested retail price, but the MSRP is always inflated.

Mail-Order

Mail-order venders offer the game at the cheapest price because they have no storefronts, only warehouses, and no fcustomer service staff. Buying mail-order is definitely the best deal for the consumers, but only if they know exactly what they want and don’t mind ewaiting three or four days to get it.

Software Stores

A specialty shop that only sell video games, or computer software in general, offers the best service and the widest selection to the customer. A lot of people in the game industry started their careers working inn such specialty shops. Selling video games isn’t very glamorous, but it’s an excellent way to learn a lot about games.

The Distributor

A distributor is a company that does not either develop or publish games. That is, they don’t build them, market them or manufacture them, nor do tyhey directly fund those activities. A distributor is a company that sells games to retailers on behalf of small publishers. A distributor also provides warehouse space and shipping.

The Publisher A Publisher is a company that funds the

development of new games and advertises them to the public. The publisher is the financial – though not necessarily the creative – heart of the game industry.They are the equivalent of a book publisher in the book industry. They decide what games will be funded for development. They also have the final word on content: since the publisher is paying for the game they get to decide what’s in it.

The Developer

Development companies exist to do one thing: design and build video games. In the early days, the developer was just one person, a programmer who did all the art & music himself. Nowadays, most first-class games require teams of 10 to 50 people, and a development company is a full-scale business with administrators and a personal department.

Gamer Demographics

So who actually plays video games? It’s difficult to tell for sure, because interactive entertainment is such a big, sprawling business. Games vary from kids playing with battery-powered handhelds in the back seat of a car to grandmothers playing bridge over the internet in the retirement home.

Video Games Are For Kids

Children and teens still make up a large part of the player base of video games: 34 percent of PC gamers and 45 percent of console gamers are under 18. However, this doesn’t mean that they’re the ones actually purchasing the games. Only 4 percent of console game buyers are under 18, and only 10 percent of PC game buyers. Parents are very involved in determining what games kids play.

Video Games Are for Boys

The stereotype persists that video games are primarily a male preserve. In reality, 43 percent of American game players are female, and their average age is 27. The majority of game developers are still male, and they tend to make games that they themselves would like.

Casual vs Hardcore

Game publishers make serious effort to reach and keep the hardcore market, because they are extremely reliable customers:They often buy one or two games a month, or even more. There are far more casual players – ordinary people that like to play for a few hours a day or week, but don’t let it consume their lives. The Sims is the best-selling “game” (toy) of all time.

Game Genres Just as television has it’s sitcoms, cop shows,

science fiction dramas and soap operas, commercial video games have their genres too. They appeal to different kinds of players – and different kinds of developers too, for that matter.

Action• First-person shooters – Quake, Half-Life, UnReal

Tournament

• Third person games – In these games you see your avatar on the screen, usually from behind

• Fighting games – Ono-on-one combat with swords, fists and other hand weapons

• Dance simulations – This recent addition challenges the players sense of rhythm.

• Action-adventures – Here the plots are more complex and the obstacles are puzzles of one kind or another

• Platform Games – Also called “side-scrollers,” these are the classic action/arcade games from the early ‘90s

Strategy and War Games

These Real-time Strategy games (RTS) introduced time pressure along with good sound effects and attractive animation and opened up this market to a new generation of enthusiastic players. Strategy games tend to require complicated user interfaces, and for that reason they’re mostly found on the PC

Sports Games

Sports games are the best-selling genre on consoles, surpassing even action games. The new genre of extreme sports games – Tony Hawk and others – have strongly boosted the popularity of this perennial favorite. Game designers find this genre a little less appealing because, after all, most of the game is already designed.

Vehicle Simulators

Vehicle simulators are games about driving or flying – cars, motorcycles, civilian and military aircraft, tanks and science-fiction vehicles all qualify in this category. Even a game like Drakkan, which is about flying around on a dragon, is essentially a vehicle simulator. Some of them are first-person and some are third-person, but most are switchable between camera angles.

Construction and Management Simulations

This genre includes:Sim City; the Caesar series; Roller Coaster Tycoon, and all the other games in which you build a world and try to make it run efficiently.Like real-time strategy games these tend to have complicated user interfaces, and work best on PCs rather than consoles. They’re more popular with adults than children and more popular with women than other kinds of games.

Graphic Adventures

Adventure games are slow-paced games, filled with puzzles, in which the player follows a plot or storyline, often a fairly intricate one. Lushly illustrated adventure games (like Myst) give you time – and a reason – to admire the scenery. They are particularly popular with female players who often enjoy the exploration and puzzle-solving aspects.

Fantasy Role-Playing Games

Here the object is to take a group of weak characters and through exploration and (usually) combat, build them into strong characters with powerful abilities. Like construction and management simulations they encourage the player to build and customize something, but in this case it’s a character rather than a city or theme park.

Online Role-Playing Games

Massively-multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs, also called persistent worlds) have experienced phenomenal success in the last few years… These games offer an online world filled with other players, a situation offering all kinds of opportunities for social interaction – both pleasant and otherwise – that single player RPGs don’t have.

Children’s Games

Games for young children are of course, easier, requiring less hand-eye coordination, and often are shorter than games for teenagers or adults……. They resemble children’s books, with bright, simple artwork, and tend to avoid violence or morally-ambiguous situations. Children’s games are full of things that make sounds and animate when you click on them.