Week 15: An introduction to the Game Industry

The Games Industry, according to Wikipedia, is defined as follows:
" An economic sector involved with development, marketing and sale of video and computer games, which encompasses dozens of job disciplines and employees thousands of people worldwide."

Many of todays modern computers and thier companies have todays Games Industry to thank for thier business. For example, components such as sound cards, graphics cards, CD-Rom drives and joysticks wouldnt have been developed had the need not been there, which arose from the gaming industry. Most modern day PC's are built for gamers, as they are the ones who require the fast processors, high memory, and excellent graphics cards/ You will find that the best and most expensive PC's are bought by gamers. You and me i doubt are no exception. You know the specifications for games. Nowadays they usually need no less than a 1.5Mhz processor, and u wont get one of those unless its a high specification computer which also comes with a decent graphics and sound card, and lots of memory to enable the games to actually run. I know thats why i got my Laptop.

The Games Industry, has for the past few years been seen as one of the fastest growing industries of the twentieth century. As the modern technology of today’s world grown, so does the games industry in terms of employees and profits. Although at the moment, it seems that the industry is struggling a little bit financially but ill go back to that later on. Since games were first being developed about 50 years ago, you can clearly see how things have advanced. No pixelation occurs, games are clear and defined in terms of character design and graphics. And it keeps on getting better and better.

The views of the people who actually work in the industry differ. This could be through company, preference, and generally different opinions, Some people might find that they don’t like doing it after a while. Mr. Morrissey from the Union BECTU, has put forward the case that many people believe that the working hours are too long, Working for 12-16 hours every day, for 3-4 months on end is too much.

Erin Hoffman, who used to work at Electronic Arts in LA became unhappy with the company and her word load, so she began anonymously blogging her days and things about the company on the internet. Eventually, she ended up taking Electronic Arts to court and it was settled, However her current view on the company and how it works is that the industry is so young and new, it has a lot to learn. The main problem they had was management and the fact that the project planning wasnt good at all, which lead to working overload when it could have been avoided. (don’t know about you lot but views like this make me wonder whether i want to do it sometimes! but hey not all companies etc are like that are they!) Now, since the court case, Electronic Arts has a strict policy to not work on Sundays (however close the deadline) and to plan their projects properly. The website which i found this article on the internet was the BBC.

Some of the main challenges which face the games industry today can be seen as advances in technology and finances. The quick and vast advances in technology mean that the games which are produced need to have a whole new level of graphical accuracy and sophistication, not forgetting that they need to be even better than the ones which proceed it! This consequence also means that it puts a strain on the company financially. It does this for the simple fact that more people are required to complete the game as more detail is needed, and better equipment in some cases. It makes it harder for the companies to make a profit. In order for the companies to make a profit after this, the game prices significantly rise. I remember the days when games were like 20 pounds brand new, Now they are no less then 40.

Another challenge to the industry is the fact that the more games which are released, the less ideas and gaps there are in the market for more games. For example, its easy enough to create 50 different racing games, but nobody will buy them if they are all the same or similar. A lot of the fantasy games which are out today are the same, even if the characters, story and image is different. They all still go by the same concept which gets boring after a while, Its challenging thinking of brand new ideas which are completely different within whats an already huge market.