Assignment - Understanding The Video Game Industry

Unit 13: Understanding the Video Games Industry

Top 5 Current Trends in Gaming

1. The Oculus Rift (Virtual Reality Gaming)

The Oculus Rift is a virtual reality device that people can wear over their eyes while they play games. The Oculus is designed for first person games, and allows the player to see the first person view of the game through their own eyes, as if they were really there. The Oculus has one screen per eye, each one running at a 1080x1200 resolution, 90hz refresh rate and a wide field of view. The headset also comes with built in 3D sound.

Financial Information

The creator of the Rift, Palmer Luckey, came up with the idea for the Oculus Rift himself, and made his first prototype in his parents garage at the age of 18. When it came to making a proper version of the device, and not a shoddy one that had been duct taped together, a Kickstarter campaign was put up. The Kickstarter raised $2.5 million. The first version of the Rift, the Development Kit 1 (DK1) was available for backers who pledged at least $300 on Kickstarter. Later on the general public were able to purchase the device for $300 from the Rift site.

Market Trends

The idea behind the Oculus Rift was to create a great VR headset that would be inexpensive for gamers, so the plan was to make something suitable for gaming. This is why the Oculus supports a high resolution, refresh rate and field of view, because these are all big selling points for gamers. Especially the wide field of view, because low field of view can cause sickness for some individuals. The Oculus Rift has many competitors, the main ones being the HTC Vive that is being made by HTC and Valve corporation, and the Microsoft HoloLens, a headset that allows the user to see and interact with holograms.

2. Esports

Esports has been around for a while, but with more people getting into competitive games such as Counter-Strike and League of Legends, it has grown even more over the past few years. If you are unaware, Esports is when professional players who have mastered there chosen game, compete against other major professional players/teams. With games like Counter-Strike and League of Legends, big tournaments are sometimes held, with the grand prize usually being a lot of money. I think the reason that Esports has grown so much is because people can play the same games at home and become good at them too. These games also offer competitive modes for normal players, so they can play properly as a team and use tactics.

Financial Information

Professional players don’t just make money by winning tournaments and they are usually offered a salary. Some players prefer to live stream on sites like Twitch because this is a safer/more reliable way of earning money. This is because you can have lots of people watching you play daily and viewers are able to donate to the streamer or subscribe to them. Expensive in game items are also donated sometimes. This year SuperData Research said that globally the esports industry generated about $748.8 million in revenue. In terms of countries, Asia is currently in the lead with over $321 million, North America $224 million and Europe has $172 million. They have also estimated that by 2018, global revenue should reach $1.9 billion.

Market Trends

Esports has moved out of the arena and into stores too. Companies such as Razer and Steelseries (companies that make gaming peripherals) sell products that are licensed by big esports teams and include logos etc. In game stickers and player skins related to certain players and teams can also be purchased in games like CS and LoL, with some of the money going to the players.

3. Free-to-Play Gaming

Free-to-play games have been around for over 10 years and are still popular today. They are games that are completely free to install and play however optional things (known as microtransactions) can be purchased in game. Some popular free-to-play games are Team Fortress 2, League of Legends and Dirty Bomb.

Market Trends and Finance

As I mentioned before, there are things known as microtransactions and these allow players to purchase items in game. Usually the items players can purchase are purely cosmetic, e.g. weapon camos in Counter-Strike (some of which cost hundreds of pounds on the Steam community market, seriously), and some in some games you can buy boosters that boost the amount of in-game currency you earn per match. Some unbalanced games are classed as “pay-to-win” because the players that pay for in game items are at an advantage when compared to players that don’t pay. Free-to-play games aren’t just on PC and you can find them on all kinds of devices. Big games like Candy Crush can be found on the app store and the developers make lots of money from in-game purchases.

4. Video Game Modding

Video game mods are things created by the community that add things to a certain game, or change features for the better. An example of a game series that has a big modding community is Fallout. For the Fallout games (New Vegas, 3 and 4) people create optimization mods, mods that improve visuals or reduce them for older PC’s, new storylines, NPC’s, weapons etc. These mods are mainly uploaded to a site called Nexus Mods, the site has a huge community and there are a variety of mods to choose from. For the PC in particular, free mods have grown in popularity with the introduction of the Steam workshop, a massive addition to Steam where players can upload game add-ons and mods and other players can download them easily with a click of a button. Valve introduced paid mods on Steam earlier this year, but they were met with massive amounts of negativity from users. There were big problems with copyright (mods being sold by people that didn’t even make it) and bad prices. Not long after the introduction of this feature, Valve listened to the community and removed it.

Below is a Fallout: New Vegas graphics enhancement mod.

5. Counter-Strike’s in game items

I have previously spoken about microtransactions however I feel that Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) deserves it’s own spot. A few years ago, Valve introduced the community market and workshop as features on Steam, and microtransactions within CS:GO. The workshop allowed players to be creative and upload their own weapon camo designs. If they gained enough votes they would be put into CS:GO with the next weapon case update. Weapon case updates add a new case to the game, which contains several weapon skins, each varying in rarity and price. The rarest item you can get is a knife. Cases are earned by playing the game and they can also be bought off the community market for a cheap price. To open the cases however, you need keys which cost about £1.69 each. This is how Valve make money off the game. When cases are opened you are given a random item from the case. Sometimes people open up items that can be worth hundreds of pounds, and they can be sold for real money on the market and can be bought by other players. (Valve take some of the money away from the seller.) Websites such as CSGOJackpot exist and these are gambling sites but you lose or gain weapon camos. There are websites such as CSGOLounge where players can trade items and make profit. I have had experience with CS:GOLounge and managed to get up to an item worth £150! The in game items on Counter-Strike are so popular and people put so much money into it it’s almost like it’s become Valves own mini industry. Players can make money and Valve can make money off the players making money…if that makes any sense…

Top 5 Future Trends in Gaming

1. Virtual Reality Gaming

I included virtual reality gaming in my top 5 current trends, but it is also classed as a future trend because lots of big virtual reality devices haven’t actually been released yet. The big one, the Oculus Rift hasn’t been experienced by as many people as it would have over the next few years because it isn’t being officially released until 2016. The only people that have their hands on Oculus Rift development kits are people who backed over $300 on Kickstarter and reviewers. The final version/near final version has not been given out to the public yet. The Microsoft HoloLens, that allows the user to interact with holograms has also not been realised yet, and this is one that will most likely be very popular because it can be used with Minecraft, one of the most popular games at this point in time. In the future, VR will continue to become better and better and it will become more affordable, easier to develop and easier to access, and it will be used by both gamers and non-gamers.

2. Indie Gaming

Indie gaming is already a thing, however I believe the industry will grow bigger and bigger in the future. If you are a bit clueless, Indie games are made by small independent teams and sometimes by single individuals. Some Indie games can often be just as or more successful as big triple A titles, because they boast their brilliant story-telling, art styles and innovative gameplay. It is also easier for indie developers to get their games out there. Websites such as IndieGoGo, Indie Fund can be used to gain funds for the game and make it a reality, and Steam has it’s own built in publishing system known as “Greenlight.” Developers can post their games, get support and feedback from the community and get their game onto the Steam store. Steam Greenlight is also quite affordable, and you pay £70 once and are able to post and update whatever you want.

3&4. Portable Gaming and Game Streaming

I've put portable gaming and game streaming in the same category because in some ways they are similar.

Portable gaming has been around for a while, with Nintendo leading with their Gameboy and DS consoles, however with the release of the 3DS and the New 3DS (yes they are different,) portable gaming has become more enjoyable with improved graphics running on more powerful hardware. Hardware is only going to get better and better and in the future we could be seeing console-like graphics on portable devices. The console-like graphics could not just be achieved through great hardware, and could also be done with streaming. An example of a current streaming device is the Nvidia SHIELD, which is a portable device that allows you to stream games from your PC directly to the Shield, which means you can play anywhere in your house. If streaming becomes more powerful people could move out of their house and play big games on the go!

5. Video Game Graphics and Realism

Games with stunning graphics already exist, and while some people may think that graphics can't possibly become more realistic, that is not the case. In the not so distant future, hardware will be so good that graphics will look extremely realistic, and virtual reality may not even feel that virtual anymore...

Believe it or not, the image below is a computer render! Some visual effect artists have said that by 2022 we will be unable to tell real life film and video game graphics apart.