What is necessary for the future of the future game industry, and to survive as a creator?

ByDave Allen

Known as a representative presence of MMORPGUltima OnlineHe served as the lead designerRaph KosterI reveal what he needs in order to survive as a creator on the change and the flow of the game industry in his own blog.

The Financial Future of Game Developers »Raph's Website
http://www.raphkoster.com/2014/05/07/the-financial-future-of-game-developers/


◆ Game industry to date
History of the game industrySupply chainThere were people with the following roles.

· Investor (A funder):A person who provides funds to create a game. The investment may be cited by the creators themselves, or they may be invested in patrons.
· Creator (A creator):The person who actually produces the game.
· Editor (An editor):Editing plays the role of project management and quality checking. In addition to managing creators' tasks, we also need to keep track of the entire market so that we can link the outcome of our work to maximum profitability.
· Publisher (A publisher):Publication is a publisher of publications created by creators. Many people tend to believe that this role is not important, but they are important work that the scale economy works heavily, it is also an important task to deal with the identity of the game brand.
· Advertisement promotion (Marketing channels):Due to the work of advertisement advertisement, games created by creators will be touched by the public. This is also an important role as it allows you to reach many potential customers by having them handled by many things such as advertisements, magazines, review sites.
· Distributors (Distributors):The distributor is the person who carries the game to the actual sales store. Many infrastructure needs to be developed to handle this staff.
· Sales store (Stores):The role of the sales store is to sell the completed game at the store.
· Customer (The audience):It is the customer's role to enjoy the completed game.
Reusers (Re-users):Reusers are responsible for making the game into a movie or animation.

This supply chain will change drastically by companies and people who produce games. For example, creators of indie games themselves will create funds for game production, they will make games as creators, and if writers outsource the game production itself, and will create scenarios themselves I guess. Besides, it boasts a great force in the game industryEAHas its own game development method and distribution route and has established its own supply chain that can not be managed by other game creators and companies.

ByVincent Diamante

◆ Concurrently serve multiple roles
While the various roles described above still exist, companies and people who will take on multiple roles and try to gain greater income will appear. Apple's App Store is also such a thing, and when creators deliver games to the App Store, they will be responsible for the following roles.

· Investor (A funder):Creators themselves.
· Creator (A creator):Creators themselves.
· Editor (An editor):App Store.
· Publisher (A publisher):When releasing games individually, you need to be responsible for publishers themselves, but in fact they are almost like Apple will do.
· Advertisement promotion (Marketing channels):Apple will advertise the app on the top page of the homepage or special page.
· Distributors (Distributors):App Store.
· Sales store (Stores):App Store.
· Customer (The audience):IPhone and iPad users.
Reusers (Re-users):Sadly, clone app creator is most likely to reuse games such as App Store.

In this way, many roles are integrated, only a small number of companies and services are surviving, and furthermore in order to sell games, it sells on a platform that has taken on many roles like the App Store It is necessary. Platforms that now have multiple roles, such as publishers, distributors, and retailers like the App Store, are as follows.

·PlayStation 4
·PlayStation Vita
·Xbox One
·Wii U
·Nintendo 3DS
·OUYA
·Amazon Fire TV
·App Store
·Google Play
·Facebook
·Steam

As these ecosystems grow larger, the game industry is gradually losing "diversity" and "complexity", Raph says. This is because the place for publishing is limited even when the creator creates the game, and therefore it is said that it is caused by the fact that the types of games to be produced are getting smaller and smaller.

ByRobert S. Donovan

◆ Money wins
In the event that the power figure of the industry is disturbed and there are many competitors, many creative ideas are born, changed ideas are adopted more and new genres are born, Raph said. On the other hand, as the market matures, companies and platforms that play many roles come into play, and if they establish a certain level of status, they will not make big changes, It seems to try to protect.

Also, in mature markets, creators often compete more in terms of money rather than competing with other games due to creativity and innovation. In other words, using money to dominate over other games in terms of marketing and distribution is becoming a more important factor in hitting the game.

By401 (K) 2012

In the current game industry, we say that there is only one choice, whether it grows to a larger company for medium-sized game development companies, or it becomes smaller and survives finely like an indie game developer. And it is supposed that the game industry will be in a stagnant state that is not mid-sized and will cause great damage to the gaming industry in the future.

Elements of luck are included in the hit of the game, so it is not always the case that only the ones who spent money on production hit, the release of the game is like a kind of gambling. Still, excellent creators gather a lot of information beforehand and negotiate preparation for the game not to be mossed. Such preliminary preparation becomes advertisement publicity, and most of the advertisement displayed on the iPad becomes advertisement of the application.

However, in game development companies and individual creators who are not financially capable, they can not put as many advertisements as large companies, they may disappear without being able to regain development costs. of courseIndie's game creators who earn a lot of money overnightHowever, they are quite a few layers. Basically, though creators at the bottom of the game industry are creative, they seem to be unable to eat in game development, and game development companies that lead the market are making creative though it earns a lot of money Thing.

ByDaniel Oines

◆ Solution
As a solution to overcome this situation Mr. Raph raises the following.

· Make creators themselves famous
· Making services that customers can not move to others
· Make some kind of flow of money using the Internet to obtain a long-term income source
· Call for funding
· Become your own creator, editor, distributor, reuser

Though these solutions were thought of in 2006, Raph said that it is still a valid solution today. However, it is very difficult for a single person to play more than one role, so if you are doing other work, power may be lost for creating the most important game, so be careful.

Also, the proportion of distributing earnings in the supplier chain is not fair, and it is also a matter of taking a lot of money in the stratum to try to profit some of the profits. It is very difficult to handle everything from game development to distribution alone, but we ask people to come from Kickstarter,Gumroad"Using a service that allows you to sell digital content like links directly to customers with a single link and not bound by a single platform or game production method seems to be a way to survive the game industry in the future.