I studied some articles about different consoles' target markets in present-day. Many providers have concentrated their focus on casual gamers, people who can be segmented to various groups. There was one exception, Nintendo. It has consciously aimed to go back to the 90's. Nintendo has published a bunch of remakes but also completely new concepts with spontaneous, naive feeling. The main target group is kids, but Nintendo apparently wants people in general to get interested again in simpler basics and worlds in games.
This kind of approach has started quite well, but there is always some distortion. I noticed multiple blog texts where devoted Nintendo gamers didn't approve this trend. In their opinion, the games for kids should be just one segment in the big picture.
I didn't know about Nintendo's alignment before I read about it. But now that I think about it, it is quite okay, considering the mainstream is all about warmongering and soft porn.
The sense of community in gaming is a wide term. Most people may think the famous, rude and aggressive internet language blooms in gaming too. Well, in some simpler, a bit mindless team games that is correct. BUT in team games, where discipline, patience, years of practicing and advanced skills are inevitable, the sense of community is unbelievably high. In games like Dota 2, Starcraft and League of
Legends the players around the world truly act as one. No matter which team of the game you represent, a healthy sportsmanship is guaranteed. These kind of high class team games have gained enormous success in the last five years. And with success, money follows. The biggest news this year was that Dota 2 Esports tournament price money hit 7 million dollars. 7 million! When you compare that number in some of the biggest sports competitions, you can see how ridiculously high it is. Here's some examples (Samuel Lingle, The Daily Dot 20/05/14):
- The Boston Marathon awards a $150,000 top prize, with $806,000 money in total, easily dwarfed by The International.
- The Tour de France, cycling’s premier event, will hand out $616,500 to the individual winner and $3 million in total winnings this year. The individual amount is comparable to what each member of the winning team will earn.
- The Kentucky Derby out $1.4 million to the winning horse this year, with a pot totalling $2.2 million. Though the real money is made after the race and the lucrative breeding market. The owners of California Chrome purportedly turned down a $6 million offer to buy 51 percent of the animal before he won the Derby. Now they estimate his value is more than $30 million.
- Every year, golfers top the list biggest earners in sports, thanks mainly to endorsements. The prize money at The Masters, one of the sport's premiere events, is fairly comparable to The International. Bubba Watson took home$1.62 million when he won earlier this year, while the event handed out $9 million total, a number that Dota itself might reach before crowd funding ends.
So you can see that multiplayer-online-battle-arenas (MOBA) really is a big deal. Now, some of you may think that gaming in this kind of level must carry the addiction issue with it. Skilled gamers do spend a lot of time practicing of course, but the word 'addiction' cannot be used. Because these games require intelligence from players, they are also intelligent to balance their lives between gaming and 'normal' life. The addiction topic can only be related to more 'mindless' games with no requirements of skills and discipline.
I read an article about what makes a good game producer (Ernst ten Bosch, 09/12/13). The basics were there: everybody is unique, be reachable, don't be afraid to ask questions, don't create unnecessary work, and so on. The writer highlighted that you don't need to have any special skills. There is no secret or any special rules to thrive as a producer or a team.
The phrase "think-outside-the-box" is used frequently when new ideas are being brainstormed. Yes, the phrase is supportive, but often fallacious. When people think outside the box, and someone comes up with something unique, it is sadly most likely an idea that was there the whole time, but everybody had rejected it for just being too unpopular opinion or an utopian solution.
I like to think there is no box. Throw the box away! When you're thinking outside the box, you go round the box leaving it's content outside your mind. When there is no box, the field of ideas is limitless. When I'm in a situation where completely new ideas are being requested, I often come up with TWO ideas from absolute opposite peripheries, and combine them into one. Of course, this doesn't work automatically every time, but when you throw a dozen of these in the air, I'm pretty sure one of them will click. I've found this kind of thinking the absolute best for example when I'm composing music, creating melodies with the guitar and expanding my musical consciousness in general.
When a game is designed from scratch, creative impact is the key. At least one team member must have the ability to gain creativity in the team. For example, not a single super-successful game today was created using the same kind of thinking than in the previous games they've made. I'd like to quote the genius of our time, Albert Einstein:
"We cannot solve the problems we've made with the same thinking we used when we created them"
This quote is valid in every problem-solving situation. And when it comes to video game industry, designers are pushed harder and harder every year to come up with new kind of thinking.
Lastly, I'd like to point out that the creativity that you posses is NOT bound by the field in which it normally thrives. If you are a skilled painter or a witty novelist, you may not have a clue how valuable you'd be in an industry that represents something from an opposite periphery.
I'd like to take a moment to be selfish and to talk about my own video gaming history. Firstly, I have to admit that nowadays I don't play video games almost at all. I'd say I play a couple of times in six months and the games I play are mainly some nostalgic classics from earlier years when I played more, games like Metal Gear Solild series, Age of Empires and Sega games from 1994. I just don't get the same thrill from them as I got as a kid. Though I've given up on them, my brothers still take video games pretty seriously. They are fully aware what happens in the industry. My first video game experience was when me and my big brother got a Sega 94 as a christmas present in 1995. With it came the games Lion King, James Bond, Batman, Robocop and NHL 94. As you can guess, two open-minded boys living in a tiny village with no influences of technology were a bit thrilled. Luckily our parents had strict limits how much we could play. In 1998 (I guess) we got a Playstation with games Crash Bandicoot and a weird car game (I don't remember the name). Crash Bandicoot was something I got hooked on. Platform games were something I found fascinating. And of course Crash, the character himself was so frigging hilarious. When the graphics of the games started to go higher and higher, Metal Gear Solid series was a concept me and my brother worshiped (and of course the whole world and production behind the game was huge). But slowly after millennium I started to play less and less, mainly because I started to play the guitar in 2000 and from around 2003 forward the instrument started to take most of my free time.
So, now you know a bit more of my "gaming career".
Steam is an internet-based multiplayer, digital distribution, digital rights management and communications platform. It was developed by Valve Corporation. It's success is based on various functions online. The software's main window has 4 sections: store, library, community and profile page. The software functioning online is keeping the user (and the software itself) up-to-date. That's what makes Steam so reliable. That's what I like about the software, though I rarely play any games.
The community-section represents the interactivity in gaming. It is easy to keep up in latest news and topics. Library shows all your games, and from there you can start to play any of them. So you don't have to jump in different folders from your desktop just to play a game, they all are in Steam. That's what I like the most about the software. Store shows also the latest news and offers, and functions as the market place (you don't say?). You can deposit money in there, and use it how and when you want. Most of the times games in the store are way cheaper than as a physical product, and the offers are often remarkable.
These are just the main functions in Steam, there are a lot of great features to discover. If you play computer games at all, I highly recommend to get Steam! Well, I guess that's enough praising.
Different types of virtual realities have been around for decades, but mostly by prototypes or impractical versions. Oculus Rift has been trying to commercialize VR glasses in game industry in the last few years. That kind of ambition requires a lot of money. And yet again, crowdfunding was the channel for OR's breakthrough. By this point, it has raised $91 million for the development. The consumer version of the product is expected to become available in late 2014 or early 2015.
The basic idea for the glasses was to get rid off the 40 degree vision in gaming. With the glasses you'd have at least 110 degree vision by turning your head. Some games have already adopted this significant improvement, and it's only a question of time before it truly achieves its goal and becomes majorly commercialized.
This kind of alternate reality is something gamers have lusted for years. Some might think this development is going to have negative side effects on one's view of reality. Already in 'normal gaming' there is notions of people having depression symptoms for not recognizing the 'matrix' from reality. I guess only time will tell.
In the past four years, there's been a statement to turn the video game industry upside down. An idea as an inexpensive console providing "high-end games on low-end hardware". We are talking about microconsoles. The original idea jumped off when a group of people in gaming industry noticed that consumers are slowly turning from playing through TV to playing with computers. They wanted to maintain TV's role as a piece of a household's mediacenter. So the company's computer game streaming service is to be connected to consoles / televisions. Therefore the cycle of regular consumer hardware upgrades would be history. The platform's basic assumption was to be inexpensive and practical, hence the term 'microconsole'.
Ouya was the first microconsole to gain success. The development was funded via kickstarter, raising $8.5 million. Also other big innovations in microconsoles are being funded by crowdfunding. So this type of funding is crucial in video games that follow our zeitgeist. The Android-based Ouya was a overnight success, and the consoles were sold out in one day! Though Ouya has received also some criticism from its weak parts and power in general, microconsoles truly have a part in the gaming industry now and in the future.
Cross-platform is a relatively new term in computer platforms. It means a programming language or a software that isn't bound to a certain computer platform. It really is a big step in information technology in general, for all programming has been quite limited for its dependency on a certain platform. Therefore programming hasn't been technically able to jump from a platform to another.
There are two kinds of cross-platforms. One requires and individual building or compilation for each platform that it supports, and the other one can be directly run on any platform without special preparation.
Here's an example: a cross-platform on the x86 architecture can run on Windows, Linux or OS X on either PC or Apple. Rachel Appel (MSDN Magazine, May 2014) sums it up on software design:
"The bottom line is that writing software these days means writing for a multitude of devices. The primary goal is to share as much code as possible across the various platforms so you have to write the least amount of code. This will help you get the product or app shipped more quickly. It will also be less prone to bugs caused by rewriting the same logic in different languages."
So with mobile industry taking over the world, cross-platform is definitely something it needs to carry on. The benefits of cross-platforming are remarkable:
-The more platforms you cover, the more people you will reach
-When your application is available for anyone to use, you do not need to target your software to niche groups
-Developing your app to work on a second operating system is not taking twice as time
-Any application benefits from multi-platform compatibility
-Similar interfaces
So, platforms absorbing each other definitely gets a thumbs-up. I cannot see one fact why platforms should be polarized in present-day.
I did a bit of research about the structures of a game production, and all sources presented the same basic factors. The design process went chronologically like this: Concept Development -> Design -> Implementation -> Testing -> Deployment. Yes, the order was quite predictable. However, in many cases the production has to jump a huge step back even in the very end of the process. A tiny error in coding, design or even the plot itself can push the release date of the game a year forward.
Concept development is the phase where the whole process starts from scratch. It begins with a grain of an idea. The goal of the design phase is to produce a design document that can be given to a game development team (the actual programmers, artists and sound designers), and turned into a working game. From there, the package is mainly in the hands of the development team. Most game production teams are tiny, so the role of the producer is quite predictable: to be aware of everyone's doings, keeping up in every section (in coding too ;) ), looking after the budget and schedule etc. It's hard to admit, but in my opinion, the producer gets a bit too much credit for the game itself though he/she has basically nothing to do with the concept, the main factor that matters.
Nonetheless, not one production is a replica,
every case is unique. It's just the silver lining that stays.
Free-To-Play (F2P) game type has taken its place in game industry in the last decade. Especially its most popular platform, freemium- game has thrived for a couple of years now. Though the platform has definitely earned its throne, the fact is its success is based on extremely addictive simple details. And with addictive factors, there is always the issue of money.
Freemium game gives you alternatives. You can play the game without any payment, but naturally it comes with loads of ads. It is also quite common that the actual game is a bit tacky. BUT, if you are willing to pay for the game, most likely you are able to play without ads and get expansions and extra features.
The dull feeling of the free game filled with ads and tacky features is the main factor that pushes the consumer to pay for the game.
The payments are tiny, but there's the illusion itself. Many gamers have faced enormous credit card bills not recognizing how much they've spent on the game. Well, of course everyone is responsible of their own doings, but when it comes to children, the issue is complicated. Parents allow their kids to buy expansions in the game from time to time, but often a kid 'loses it' by the addiction of the game. The game providers have completely washed their hands from the responsibility-issue. That may sound logical and just, but in the past year game experts have raised this issue to the surface. The thesis of freemium games is questioned globally. Gamers want some balance to this witty way of charging from addiction function. A person should pay for the game if he LIKES the game, not because its addictive force.
This kind of approach has started quite well, but there is always some distortion. I noticed multiple blog texts where devoted Nintendo gamers didn't approve this trend. In their opinion, the games for kids should be just one segment in the big picture.
.png)
