Video Games

1
Video Games

• Industry Overview

2
Moi?

• PhD Games and AI _at_ NU
• Humanities/Art Background _at_ U of C
• 5 years working with
• Game Developers Conference
• International Game Developers Assoc.
• Academic Outreach
• Game Studies Curriculum

3
Moi, aussi.

• Other work
• Animate Arts at Northwestern
• Game Design Tuning Workshop
• Experimental Gameplay Workshop
• AAAI Games Workshops
• Indie Game Jam
• Misc. Travel Conferences

4
Talk Overview

• Industry Background
• Industry Overview
• Trends Highlights
• Issues Opportunities
• Wrapping up

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Industry Background
6
Development Snapshot

• 1999
• 3-5 people
• 12-18 months
• 100k-gt400k
• Many games had little marketing

• 2003
• 20-100 people
• 15-30 months
• 2million -gt 10m
• Any game done will have real marketing

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Publishing Snapshot

• Publishers
• Pay for development
• Own the IP
• Market and Sell
• Move boxes to retail
• Handle QA and CS
• Focus test
• Manage many projects

• Developers
• Build all content
• Build all technology
• Large dedicated team
• Often on milestones
• Some internal QA
• with many exceptions

8
Market Snapshot A

• Overall
• 20 publishers, 700 development groups
• 1200 new titles on PC and Console in 02
• 12b software sales in 02
• 35 aggregate revenue growth in 02
• Games Platforms
• EverQuest 400,000 subscribers
• Game Boy over 100 million total
• Sony 70 million shipped consoles by 2003

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Market Snapshot B

• NOT as big as Hollywood
• 2002 US domestic game sales 5.5 billion
• 2002 US domestic box office 9.1 billion
• 2002 US Leisure/Ent. Book Sales 9.5 billion
• 2002 US Music Sales 12.2 billion
• 2001 NAB/TVB US ad revenue 54.4 billion
• We are still a niche medium
• 2002 US domestic games units 162.7 million
• 2992 US domestic movie tix 1.9 BILLION

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Lots to figure out!

• Competing visions about what is happening, and
  why.
• Big picture thinking is hazy.
• Generally reactive, not proactive

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Industry Overview
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Hot topics?

• Publishers Managing Risk
• Mass Market Penetration
• Innovation and Technology
• Mobile and Social gaming

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The current vibe

• Conservative Times
• Projects larger and more expensive
• New Technology threatens stability of
  established development practices
• Evaluation What makes a game successful?

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Projects

• Platform Choice
• Team Size/Capabilities
• Genre/Market
• Original IP or Sequel
• How to Differentiate?

15
Technology

• New or Leveraged
• Original or Licensed
• Network/Community requirements
• Which bangs and whistles
• Long-term strategies and goals?

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Evaluation

• Who is buying?
• Why?
• What?
• Who are we ignoring?
• How can we grow our market?

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Trends Highlights
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Quality is up!

• Everything looks pretty spectacular
• PC games are still selling
• Online on line!
• Interesting console games get press
• Katamari Damacy!

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New Ideas Emerging

• Selling stuff
• Steam
• Online Console
• Making stuff
• Content Creation
• Design
• Episodic games
• Simulation and procedural animation

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Good news?

• Despite glitches, games are selling.
• Particularly
• Racing games
• Sports games
• Shooters (WWII SciFi)
• Sims

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Bad news?

• Christmas Crunch
• Which to buy?
• How many to buy?
• When to buy?
• Top 10 titles more competitive
• Good or bad...
• ... depending on who you are

22
Issues Opportunities
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A friend of mine says...

• Kim Pallister (Intel)
• CES 2005
• Same basic points!
• Summary follows...

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Biz Stuff

• Consolidation
• Collapse of vertical model
• Expanded channels, increased market share
• Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm and Inside
  the Tornado

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Parallelism

• Already happening
• multi-threading
• streaming architectures
• Xbox2,PS3, PC converging on a hybrid
• PC's already there (CPU GPU).
• this will be the most challenging transition
  facing the game development community since the
  move from 2D to 3D.

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Mobile Games

• What is a mobile game?
• Platform strengths
• Limitations
• New audiences
• New verbs or memes?

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Asia

• 300M broadband over 4-5 years.
• not just a new segment potentially THE BIGGEST
  SEGMENT of players so far
• Huge impact on all fronts

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Beyond Graphics

• Great Game Graphics Who Cares?
• Physics and Simulation
• Puppets -gt Actors

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Ive been noticing...

• GameTech 2004
• Tech directors, graphics folks
• Common issues and strategies
• Issues anyone can learn from

30
Innovation expensive

• Tool chains
• Design
• Communication
• Management

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Research expensive

• Small games, small audiences
• Marketing and sales
• What a flop teaches us
• Tomb Raider AOD
• Prince of Persia I and II

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Simple things

• Animation blending
• Agent Coordination
• Application of simple models
• Lanchesters law
• Planning

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Players become producers

• Player communities and mods
• Asia and Outsourcing
• Game studies and Game Design
• ??

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Diversity key

• New ideas
• Better ears
• Better eyes
• Quality of Life

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Wrapping up
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Lots of hard problems

• Biz Long-term vision needed
• Marketing Plenty of room to grow
• Startup DIY hard, but still possible
• Design Innovation will be key
• Mgmt increasingly important

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Contact

• Robin Hunicke
• hunicke_at_cs.northwestern.edu
• www.cs.northwestern.edu/hunicke
• Questions, please!!