I decided to research more into the game industry, looking at production and publishing companies and finding out more information about the leading game developers in the industry at current.
The video games industry mainly persists of Developers, Publishers and Manufacturers. Developers are the companies that produce the game itself, hire the staff to code, animate, storyboard, write and complete the video game in all its stages. Publishers are responsible for bringing the final product onto the market, advertising it and trying to ensure its success. Publishers for video games, unlike those for books, will play a vital part to the development and have a say on design and content within the game. Video games manufacturers are the companies that create the platform the game is played on, for example Nintendo with their Wii or DS consoles.
Many large video game publishers, such as EA, Activision and Nintendo own both Development studios and publish. (Nintendo manufactures as well as doing both these things, this however is rare for a gaming company.) Because of this, these companies can bring a game from an idea, to the final product without going to a 3rd party to finish it.
The most popular 5 game publishers/developers with gamers, within the industry at current are (According to Yahoo directory);
- Electronic Arts (EA) who publish and create a wide variety of different games for varied platforms.
- Blizzard Entertainment - developer of the popular online phenomenon World of Warcraft.
- ID Software.inc – who were responsible for the Quake series.
- Activision - publisher and developer of many games, including Call of Duty and Guitar Hero.
- Valve – developer and publisher of many popular series such as Portal, Team fortress and Half Life
All of these companies have both developed and published successful games to the market, many of them recognisable to video game players.
As far as video game manufacturers are concerned, the market is solely dominated by three main conglomerate companies. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. All of these companies have manufactured a successful 7th generation console on the market today, such as the Wii, DS, PS3 and Xbox 360. Currently, these are the only companies that have been successful in the console market, despite many attempts by others to break in. Some companies such as Sega have dropped out of this market and steer more towards game developing now. Sega was popular in the 3rd and 4th generations of the gaming market, creating many popular consoles along with cabinets for arcades, the Sega Megadrive and Sega Dreamcast were highly popular consoles in the 90’s and achieved high success for the company.
All three of these companies are highly recognised among gamers and many developers and publishers work to release games on their consoles every year.
I will now be looking at some indie game developers, due to the fact that my end product will be indie. (as I am working solo) Indie games are often very different to mainstream games produced by large companies, so I will be taking a look at some indie developers and the genre’s /styles they have chosen to work in.
Good work Charlotte, you are thinking about institutions and conglomerates. It would be useful if you could find the profit figures (for the leading companies to put into context the weight these companies carry) and research the average cost of producing and marketing a game (both for conglomerates and indie producers). Also, don't forget to think about which company your own game would be best suited to as you will need to include this at a later point (think about this even if you intend to be an 'indie producer'). It may also be a good idea to do a section on how new technologies (e.g. apple apps) makes it easier for indie producers to create games (in a similar way to new technologies and the film industry).
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