Understanding the Computer Games Industry
Three types of companies exist within the gaming market space. These are Development Studios (The Company mainly responsible for the design and actual creation of the game), Publishing Houses (the company mainly responsible for the funding and media/advertising which accompanies the game) and the Independent Studios (these tend to be comprised of a very small number of people who do the job of the Development Studios and the Publishing Houses, usually within their own homes, and sometimes with support from the public via Kickstarter or Steam Greenlight). The Development Studios tend to focus on the design, production, programming and quality assurance aspects of the game, with teams of people working under one or two team leaders (i.e. a character programmer and environment programmer working under a lead programmer). The designers and artists help in creating the overall look and design of the game, with any number of people working on different things within the game world (e.g. costume design, weapon design etc..). This can either be developed before, after or along with the story, which can be written by a team of people, or sometimes just one person (i.e. Hiroyuki Owaku, Hideo Kojima etc…). This can play a big part in the final game, and so it is very important for time to be spent on the story. For example, a game like Heavy Rain has a heavy influence on story, and it therefore needs to be compelling enough for the player to want to continue. The story of a game can also completely change the way the game is designed, and may even play a part in designing
the mechanics for a game (like the ability to reverse time in “Prince of Persia: Sands of Time”). This is one of the most creative parts of the process, along with the concept art and design, and it is these parts of game design which particularly interest me. The game programmers are responsible for physically building the game world and then designing how it works. This involves coding, and may also involve a lot of experimentation within the game engine to find new and interesting ways to design a game mechanic or to develop a control system that works with the game. This usually takes a long time to complete, and is usually the most time consuming part of the whole game design process, sometimes taking years to complete depending on the length of the game. When this is finally completed, the work is handed over to the quality assurance group who comb through the unfinished version to pick out any bugs, glitches and problems that they can find, so that the game can be sent back and fixed until it is at a suitable standard. All of these people work under instructions from the game’s producer, who helps with things like story, art and gameplay and generally oversee the entire project, getting feedback from lead story writers and lead programmers and any other project managers within the development team.
While the Development Studios get to work in making the actual product, the Publishing Houses take care in the marketing, distribution and the legal implications for the game. This mainly includes making sure that the game is properly advertised, and Mumbler reaches the widest audience possible. To ensure that they achieve this, they need to focus on how they will market their game most effectively to different countries and areas, and by making sure that the content isn’t overly offensive according to the different requirements and taboos that exist that exist in different regions (e.g. the Mumblers from the NTSC releases of Silent Hill were changed to Claw Fingers for the PAL release because it was thought they too closely resembled small children). The legal side of the gaming industry mainly concerns copyright and intellectual propGrey Child erty rights. This may include making sure that the game is using resources that have either been created for that game, or that they have permission to use, as well as making sure the people responsible for the game are suitably credited and paid for their contributions and work. Doing this early can stop the company losing money in the future from lawsuits.
For example, the company EA filed a lawsuits against the company Zynga over their “YoVille” game, which they claimed was a blatant clone of their game “The Sims Social.” This resulted in both of the companies being engaged in a legal row over the supposed “stealing” of employees and the accusations of copyright infringement and intellectual property rights and ownership. Not only does this create bad press for the companies involved, but the whole event was time-consuming and costly to both companies. As started earlier, Independent Studios have to take on all these jobs and responsibilities themselves, which means that they have to be very careful not to use anything that they don’t have permission to use, as they usually would not have the money to afford a lawyer who would be able to defend them in court against a huge multi-million dollar company like EA or Nintendo. As the number of people involved in Independent Studios is small, they have to take on multiple roles and take on bigger jobs than someone who works for a big company, but they take a bigger cut of the pay when the game is finally released.