Gamasutra.com - Question of the Week: 2007 New Year's Resolutions For The Games Industry


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Compiled By Brandon Boyer
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Gamasutra
January 15, 2007

Question of the Week: 2007 New Year's Resolutions For The Games Industry

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Question Of The Week: 2007 Resolutions

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If there is one trend in the general business practices of the video game industry in 2007 I would like to see happening, it would be to capture more professional management, business, and marketing graduates coming through from business and marketing undergrad and master degree programs. It is a shame that the best and brightest management graduates with the fruits of recent management thinking, knowledge, techniques, and education are cherry picked by Fortune 500 companies, consultancy firms, and the financial sector.

As the video game medium has grown into a global entertainment industry, the skill deficit within the business development and management capabilities of video game companies and the industry at large has become all too noticeable. There needs to be a new breed of upcoming professional trained business development, management, and marketing managers that have the knowledge, know-how, skills, and education to pinpoint, manage, and leverage opportunities throughout console, online, casual, and handheld games development alongside shifting trends in online content and product delivery platforms. We might see fewer products cancelled, less money wasted by studios, and more stability in the games industry.

-Alan O' Dea, Monumental Games

Stop using wooden crates in games!

-Anonymous

The most beneficial change the game industry could undergo: major publishers realize the economic advantages of carefully managed, revolutionary innovation in interactivity, and they:

* Dedicate a nontrivial minority of their finances to the development of revolutionary, non-mainstream gameplay, and fully fund and market the most promising projects to completion

* Plan for most of these projects to be commercial failures by producing plenty of the “surefire moneymakers” that already carry the industry

* Reap the monetary rewards when lightning strikes and a new, groundbreaking franchise takes its place among the pantheon of “surefire moneymakers” (along the lines of – but possibly greater than – The Sims, Grand Theft Auto 3, etc)

-Nathan Frost, Crystal Dynamics

Working conditions, different business models.

-Anonymous

Further growth & success in the indie games segment.

-Anonymous

If there was only one change I could ask for, hhmm, the industry is going in a pretty good direction right now (save for the normal problems like lack of innovation, high dev costs, jobs going overseas, etc.), I'd have to say, send Jack Thompson to Iraq. As Ripley once said, "It's the only way to be sure."

-Tony Dormanesh, Collision Studios

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