Other side of the Coin

Everyone who is interested in the game industry or read news regarding the games probably read couple of sues regarding the game developer or distributor companies. It is like every major or minor company in the game industry that faced couple of courts since 2000.

Most of these courts focused on violence and nudity of the video games. With the advancement of technology and popularity of the mature games, many games today contain violence and nudity in their arsenal. Best examples are Dragon Age, Mass Effect and The Witcher franchises for the RPG games.

Because of that, many parents and media focused on the contents of the game. Recently, long awaited game Duke Nukem Forever accused as highly sexist by the media and Women's Media Center VP. Because of the status of the women in the game (every women in the game are strippers and you can kill them for fun), The Gearbox Software will likely face a case about this issue after the release.

Regarding of the mature game issue, there is another case about mature games in the Iowa Supreme Court. The case is about how to sell the mature games with or without parents. California State wanted to prohibit the sail of mature games to the minors who do not have parents with them. Video Software Dealers Association and Entertainment Software Association concerned by this law because they fear that this law may hurt their income tremendously and apparently both parties will face each other in Iowa.

However, the industry does not just face sex and violence regarding cases. Sometimes taxes and the other regulations are important case as well. For example, the best known Facebook games, FarmVille and CityVille developers Zynga considering the leave San Francisco because stock-option payroll tax.

Screenshots:

1.http://www.electricpig.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/fallout-gore.jpg
2.http://www.3drealms.com/duke-nukem-forever.jpg

Advertisement in Games?

In all around entertainment businesses, advertisement is the main income and marketing tools for the companies. Because of the large audience of the entertainment industries, many companies choose them for marketing their products or services. This type of business is common especially in the music and movie industry and we can see the sign of the branding and marketing of the products inside the game industry as well.

However, there is a big difference between other entertainment industries and the game industry in regard of advertising. Most of advertisement and marketing tools aren't fond by the audience. Most of the audience try to avoid the advertisement rather than listen or watch. On the other hand in game industry, advertisement adds realism into the game which is highly demanded by the audience.

Most of the in-game advertisements are brand names who are the sponsors of the sport teams like brand name of the sponsors on the jerseys. Because of that reason, most of the in-game advertisements are for sport genre. Madden, NHL and NBA2K franchises are the best example. However we can see other brands name in racing and simulations as well.

It's hard to say that we can encounter any advertisement in RPG games. Because most of the RPG game have a concept of medieval fantasy and this concept hardly open an environment of marketing.

Screenshot sources:
http://img810.imageshack.us/f/ajie.jpg/
http://www.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/ea-sports-game-gatorade.jpg
http://www.testdriveunlimited2z.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Test-Drive-Unlimited-2-tdu211.jpg

Power of the Sequels

One month ago I wrote a post about how the competition will rise in the game industry for 2011. There will be a lot of AAA games going to be release at the same time. Despite the news, the whole industry will wait till to the end of year because of the recent financial reports.

Also, there are some news going out in the internet about the games in the Game Development Center 2011(GDC 2011). In the GDC, there was a lot of games which made a huge impression to the press as well as to the auidence.

However, I realized that most of the anticipated games of the 2011 and recently released AAA games are sequels of the last or two years old games. For example "Dead Space 2", "Dragon Age 2" and "Witcher 2: The Assassins of Kings". At first, it may seemed that industry repeated itself by creating something already created 2 or 3 years ago. However, these sequels games are more improved than their predecessors.

These new games offer more graphics, gameplay, action and most importantly more fun than their predecessors. Although, most of these games are not yet released, the expectations of the industry and audience seems to be very high. Because the developer teams of each game tried to keep their strong points and improve their weakness as well as creating more contents for their games.

Actually, I don't really sure about why most developers tend to do sequels rather than creating a new game. I guess it may be because of the recent financial news or the popularity of the sequels games. With the discouraged news of financial reports, the developers and producers don't want to take huge risks anymore. Because one failure may lead to bankruptcy in these days. Moreover, sequel games have a loyal players because of the first game and the name of the product already became a brand which the auidence can trust.

At the end, I think these were the reasons why we see many sequel games in the shelves today. But I can't say that I have problem with this. Also I believe that, most of the audience agree with me right now.