The Structure Of The Computer Game Industry

The Structure Of The Computer Game Industry

Computer games or video games are one of the largest industries around today, probably because of societies constant need for owning the newest technologies. The gaming industry has been a massive technological progression to society, and will continue to in the future. Most households in technology reliant countries today own a game console, PC or smartphone, and 49% of these households own at least two consoles.

The industry is made up of different layers. These include:

1. The Capital and Publishing Layer

This is using money to create or develop new titles and seeking returns through licensing of titles.

2. Product and Talent Layer

This includes the developers, designers and artist who actually made the game.

3. Distribution Layer

Working with retail and online shops to market and sell the game.

4. Hardware Layer

The people who create the hardware for the games to be played on. The 'major players' are console based such as Sony (Playstation), Nintendo (Wii) and Microsoft (Xbox), but hardware can include online media or mobile devices, and virtual machines like Java and Flash, and software platforms like internet browsers and facebook.

5. Consumer Layer

The people who buy, download or play the games.

The basic structure of how the industry works is the process it takes from concept to consumption:

Developer>Publisher>Marketer>Distributor>Hardware>Retail>Consumer.

A game normally takes a few years to create and complete and there are usually six main stages of the game development.

• Prototyping: These are made fairly quickly in pre-production to test ideas and concepts before making the actual game.
• Game Design: The designing of the actual game by a team of people such as producers, game artists, copyrighters, other programmers and artists.
• Production: The games programmers work with the lead programmer, the art staff and 3-D graphics programmer to create the actual game.
• Testing: Professional game testers test the game and the programmers fix bugs and errors.
• Nearing Completion: The beta testing period where stress tolerance is measured for servers and final bugs are fixed. It is sent off to the publisher when it is complete.
• Maintenance: The developers wait for enough feedback on bugs and the game goes through a patch which fixes bugs, alters game play and adds more features.