Game Industry A (Very) Brief History 1961 Spacewar! by Steve - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Game Industry A (Very) Brief History 1961 Spacewar! by Steve Russell on a PDP-1 at MIT the first widely available game 1971 Computer Space by Bushnell and Dabney based on Spacewar! the first
– by Steve Russell – on a PDP-1 at MIT – the first “widely” available game
– by Bushnell and Dabney – based on Spacewar! – the first mass-produced coin-op game
Spacewar! Courtesy of Joi Ito
– by Bushnell and Dabney – same guys who made Computer Space
– released by Atari – the first mainstreet hit on arcade and home (1975)
– Arcade revenues hit $8 billion pa, the most ever – Equivalent to $20 billion today
– Game on a cartridge – Atari 2600, aka VCS (pictured) – IntelliVision by Mattel – ColecoVision
– Market overcrowding – Poor quality games
Space Invaders, Asteroids, Pac- Man, Centipede, Donkey Kong, Missile Command, Joust, Tempest, Defender
– Nintendo Entertainment System – Sega Master System – D-pad
– SNES, Sega Genesis, Nintendo GameBoy – CD-ROMs, Doom, Dune II, Myst
– Sega Saturn, Sony Playstation, N64 – Rise and fall of 3Dfx, fall and rise of NVidia – Ultima Online, Everquest, Counterstrike
– PS2, Xbox, GameCube – Microsoft joins the race, Sega drops out – On-line comes to consoles
– PS3, Xbox 360, Wii – Online distribution (Xbox Live, Wii Ware, PSN Store) – Sony and Microsoft fight for hardware superiority – Nintendo pushes gameplay innovation – Longer life cycle
– PS4/Pro, XBox One/Scorpio, Wii U
– DS, DS Lite, DSi, 3DS – PSP, PSP 3000, PSP GO, PS Vita – iPhone, Android – iPad, Android tablets
– Wiimote, WiiU GamePad – Guitar Hero, Rock Band – Kinect / Sony Move
– Web Browser + Facebook as a platform e.g. Farmville – Freemium / Free To Play
– Brick and mortar
– Internet
– Steam – PSN Store – Xbox Marketplace – Apple Store – Google Play
– publishing – development – distribution – hardware manufacturers
– You can be working for a company that owns a competitor
– Low barrier to entry – Very hard to reach customers
– Funding game development – Acquiring, owning, maintaining IP licenses – Marketing, PR, end-user tech support – Sales and manufacturing of the game
– commissioned, funded, published or distributed by the major publishers
– Remainder to console royalties, distributors
– Programmers, artists, designers, sound engineers, musicians, producers, writers and others
– Part or wholly owned by a publisher, distributor or hardware manufacturer – Independent (usually not for long)
– Most often by a publisher to develop a specific game – Some can and do fund projects internally
critical to the success of commercial games
space
like E3
– Amazon, Steam, Mobile stores – Opportunity to bypass the publisher and the distributor – Publishers still have the money and the IP, though – Publishers don’t want to upset retailers and make sure not to undercut them in digital stores
– Open access: anything goes
– Thousands of possible configurations with unknown stability and interactions between components
– Roughly 10X the revenue of the PC market – Closed access: all titles must be approved in advance
independent developers)
– Fixed hardware architecture (limited resources) – Rigorous QA process by Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft
– Large market, but many many games
– Publisher or developer owns or has licensed rights to a movie, book, character, show, team or a previous game. – Often large up-front fee to acquire rights to use IP
– Reduced marketing spend – Reduced risk
(movie typically)
– The games was often an afterthought – Rushed development, compromised product – Not good when based upon a future movie that flops
– Viz Halo or Assassin’s Creed movies – Original IP coveted but risky
– $20 - $200+ million (US)
– Higher production values – Multi-genera, “open-world” gameplay – High fidelity cinematics – Multiplayer gameplay – Licensing tie-ins – Fully localized content – Celebrity voice acting – Technical and creative arms race
Platform Units Sold PlayStation 2 >158M PlayStation 3 >83M PlayStation 4 50M Xbox 360 84M Xbox One ~20M (at end of 2015) Wii 101M Wii U 13M Nintendo DS 154M PlayStation Portable 82M
– Don't know how to engineer fun
– Building a plane while flying it
– Iteration is key
– Industry expects minimum development cost – Industry expects bedroom working hours – Little formal software design – Little documentation – Mostly just coding!
– At their heart, they are entertainment, not software
– Only about 20-30% of game team members are programmers – 20-30% of game team members are scripters who have no programming education – No initial requirements remain fixed
– “Make it not suck now” imperative
– Many classical and cutting edge software problems have to be solved to create a game – Only many times over!
– Core Runtime Systems – Tools & Pipelines
– Modular – Robust – User-friendly – Extensible & Sufficiently flexible – Efficient