Unit 13 - Understanding The Game Industry: Task 1 - Structure

Task 1 - structure - The Value Chain

Profile each of the main sectors within the industry:

Developers

A video game developer is a software developer who designs and creates games, The developers have the job of designing and story writing to coding and programming, other areas of work in this field include visual arts, design and audio.
There are many parts that go into developing a video game designers, graphic artists and producers all help in the final cut of a game:
- The games designer (also known as game developer) will be involved in the various aspects of creating a video game.
-The graphic artists will create how the game looks by either hand drawing of computer software, the are in charge of the overall layout and production of the game.
On the other hand programmers and software developers turn the ideas of the artists and other members of the team into code which in turn creates the games operating system. The majority of game developers have development studios such as Activision's Radical Entertainment which is based in Canada. There are also independent game developers known as 'indie' who rely on either crowd funding or any alternate form of funding for their game. An example of an indie game developer is Dark Water Studios who developed games such as Dogfighter. Who developed and published their game and had it distributed by steam.

Activision are one half of the Activision Blizzard, Inc who are one of the biggest games development/publisher companies in the world. Activison have published games such as 'Call of Duty Series', 'Destiny', and 'Skylanders' since 1979. They have a total of 38 studios and offices in a variety of locations worldwide with their headquarters in Santa Monica, California, United States. In 2014 their total assets equaled to $14.75 billion which was $0.738 billion more than their previous year. For example a game like 'Destiny' will have a much larger budget for market than an indie game, they could showcase their game with adverts on TV and posters etc.

A prime example of an indie game developer would be Psyonix. Founded in 2000 by Dave Hagewood and they still only have around 30 employees. Their first game was planned to be 'Vampire Hunter; The Dark Prophecy' but was cancelled, they then developed 'Monster Madness; Grave Danger' and 'Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars' in 2008 and released on PlayStation 3. Then in 2015 the developed a sequel to 'Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars' with 'Rocket League'. in contrast to a company like Activision, indie game developers will not have a big budget to promote their games so will rely on platforms like steam, Ps4 and YouTubers to promote the game. For example with Rocket league, Ps4 put it up for free for a while which was a major promotion for the game and gained the game a lot of publicity.

Publishers

A video game publisher is a company that has the job of putting a game on the market that either they them selves or another company have created. in the same way the publishers of books and films the publishers often have the task of manufacturing and marketing the product and all other aspects of advertising. The majority of the time the publishing company give the development team the funds for the game which is called 'external development'. Large publishing companies often market their own game where as smaller publishing companies hire distribution companies. A lot of factors have to be taken into account when publishing a game such as; where the game is based and if the country your aiming at has any restrictions, for example if you are looking to sell your history based game in Germany you would try to steer away for things like the Nazi's. Trends are also looked at when publishing a game because if a certain type of game sells a lot in a country then you would aim at selling at that country for example if the development tea have created an RPG game and it is a big seller in France then you would target that country.

A great example of a high end video game publisher would be 'Sony Interactive Entertainment' previously known as 'Sony Computer Entertainment' who have internal staff developing games. Sony was founded in Tokyo, Japan in 1993 and their headquarters is now based in San Mateo, California, USA. They have published some very good games developed by other companies such as Naughty Dog's 'The Last of Us' and FromSoftware's 'Bloodborne' which are both primarily PlayStation games and are not sold on other platforms. the PlayStation 1, released in 1994 was a a very popular console, selling about 102.49 million worldwide, its successor (the PlayStation 2) is the most sold games console to date with its sales reaching about 155 million as of march 2012.

Another good example of a games publisher is 'Telltale Games', founded in 2004 by Dan Connors, Kevin Bruner and Troy Molander they also develop video games as well as publish them. They are a mid-sized company based in San Rafael, California who serve worldwide and only have around about 240 employees. They have published games for other development teams such as 'Hector: Badge of Carnage' for Straandlooper for IOS that has three episodes as well as '7 Days to Die' by The Fun Pimps which is for Ps4 and Xbox One.

Console Manufacturers/First Party Publishers

A very popular example of a console manufacturers/first party publishers would be Microsoft, Microsoft who created the Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox one, have stormed the console market in recent years by improving and adding to the console they added the Kinect to the Xbox 360 and the Xbox one which gave it some popularity. The Xbox 360 had around about 85.5 million to date, Microsoft, like other console manufacturers/ first party publishers, make some games exclusive to their console, Microsoft made halo sole to the Xbox which added to popularity of their console because of the acclaim of the Xbox. Halo 3 in 2007 is one of the most popular halo game and had 12.14 million sales, Halo 3 is one of the fastest selling games in recent years, reaching $170 million in sales within the first 24 hours, the game had over 1.7 million sales in preorder sales alone and in the U.S 3.3 million within the first 12 days

Another example of a Console Manufacturers/ First party publisher would be Nintendo who have been a very influential part of the game industry, they began this in 1985 by releasing the Nintendo entertainment system which was very popular at the time selling nearly 62 million worldwide.
More commonly they released the Nintendo Wii which was released in 2006 and main feature was the wireless controllers, As of December 31st the Wii has sold close to 101 million units across the world. They even published games for the Super Mario Bros. for multiple of their consoles such as the DS, the Wii and the Wii u, plus others.

Distribution and Retail

Distributors are any games company that sells their game, they sell it to the retailers, who are shops like CEX or Grainger games who distribute the game to players.

The distributor would be the publishers of the game who want to market the game and popularize it, an example would be Electronic Arts, who have developed and published games such as: Fight Night series, Battlefield series and Star wars series. Once they have these games ready to ship they will market them to companies like 'GAME', 'GameStop' and 'CEX', who will then sell on the game.

In recent times game retailers are becoming less popular because of the amount of games that are being bought online, so they also move their company online and add deals to get people to buy, places like the PlayStation store and Xbox store are part of the reason this is happening because it makes it a lot easier for the player to buy the game whilst sitting at home, I myself buy most of my games from the PlayStation store, as do a lot of the people I know. They also add deals and free games which make it harder for the shops to compete with.

Press and Media

Press and Media have increased their role in what constitutes a safe game, they are always petitioning that a game is unsafe or unfit to play because it promotes violence across a wide variety of people.

Experiments have been taken place to detect whether a game can make a person violent, In 2015 the American Psychological Association said that there is a clear link between how violent a game is and how violent the person is

On the other hand the press and media also promote games as much as they deter them, a lot of blogs depict how good a game is through the eyes of a player and not only this, YouTubers and streamers are becoming very popular among every players and most gamer's get advise on whether to buy a game from these sort of people. YouTube is seen by million everyday and if theyre saying a violent game the 'Call of Duty series' is fun then people are going to buy it.

A YouTuber like Angry Joe who has 2.6 million subscribers will have a big say in which games are good and which games are bad for instance he said 'Batman: Arkham City' is a very good game and this has 4.6 million sales worldwide, some of that can be contributed to him and others lioke him.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_publisher

Unit 13 - Understanding The Game Industry

Thursday 29 September 2016

Task 1 - Structure - The Value Chain