This Week In The Business: Making Games Is Hard

This Week In The Business: Making Games Is Hard

QUOTE | “Making games is hard and tedious work, so you should be sure you enjoy it before devoting the time and money to school.” — John Murphy, designer for Young Horses (Octodad), along with other developers on the value of education in the game industry.

Elsewhere in the business of video games this past week …

QUOTE | “Within the next 3-5 years, the biggest names in Chinese publishing will play an increasingly larger role in what we’ve come to believe is ‘our’ games industry.” — Eutechnyx CEO Darren Jobling, giving advice to developers about bringing games to China.

QUOTE | “I would like to see more emphasis on pure design, particularly how to think in an innovative way that generates new ideas that are powerful.” — John Romero, veteran game designer and Creative Director at UC Santa Cruz, along with other game educators talking about what’s needed in game education.

STAT | 48 per cent — Percentage of US gamers that are female, according to the Entertainment Software Association; this is a big jump from 2007, when women were 38 per cent of the US gamer population.

STAT | 1.2 million — Number of Xbox One units sold to retailers in the first quarter of this year, from Microsoft’s latest earnings report; Microsoft says Xbox One owners have been averaging five hours per day on their consoles.

QUOTE | “For the first time in two years, our teams delivered sequential growth across our key performance metrics.” — Zynga CEO Don Mattrick, commenting on the company’s first quarter earnings, putting the best spin on the company losing $US61 million last quarter.

STAT | $US470 million — Amount of revenue expected in 2014 from the free-to-play PC game market in Brazil, according to research firm Interpret; last year some 17.2 million Brazilian gamers enjoyed F2P games.

QUOTE | “We’ve all become accustomed to these fantastic things that we do every day.” — Eutechnyx’s Jason Collins, talking about the race car sim developer’s efforts to sell their virtual showroom technology outside of the game industry.

STAT | 73 million — Number of copies of all Assassin’s Creed games sold to date since the franchise debuted in 2007, according to Ubisoft; their second most successful game franchise is Just Dance, with 48 million copies sold.


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