Gaming & E-Sports
Rethinking the economic model
Recent posts on various media I like; Wired’s piece ‘In Praise of the 3-Hour Game‘ and even more recently New York Times’ article ‘Video Game Makers Challenged by the Next Wave of Media‘, all seem to focus on one message: The way gaming and game development has worked for the past 15 years is coming to an end. This fact is presented as some surprising development, while it could be said to just be behaving like all the other media. Music industry anyone? Newspaper industry anyone? I could probably find plenty of examples.
Preferably, I would take a lesson learned from this and be done with it.
World of Warcraft’s China branch faces bankruptcy
This is quite ironic. One of the biggest gaming markets and the biggest game of them all, should be a healthy combination, or would it? Because of China’s strict rules in terms of content, the latest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, has not yet been approved for release, causing Chinese players to activate Taiwanese accounts and start playing there. China’s owner of the WoW license is now facing bankruptcy due to high costs already present. (servers and license fees)
Lets see if the Chinese government will help out and get the game cleared in time.
http://www.wowinsider.com/2009/03/14/chinese-wow-provider-the9-faces-bankruptcy/
Ultimate Gamer
The World Cyber Games are working on a reality-series, in which 12 gamers are going to battle it out for the title Ultimate gamer, a $100.000,- cheque and a position as ‘the face of the WCG’. The reality TV series will be broadcast on the Sci-Fi Channel from March 10th on but will also be viewable on the Ultimate Gamer Website.
“As the 12 contestants share a loft in downtown Los Angeles, they will be tested in real-life challenges inspired by best-selling game titles, compete in the video games themselves, and ultimately must avoid elimination in head-to-head battles in an arena filled with hundreds of spectators. Ultimately, the player who is versatile and strategic enough to best their opponents in both the real-life and virtual gaming worlds will emerge as the WCG Ultimate Gamer.”I´ll probably watch it once to see if it sticks. What do you expect?
Gaming & E-Sports: Games in UK grow 20 percent
This staggering number is based in the following article on Gamindustry.biz:
Games growth over 20 per cent at HMV
Based on sales numbers from 2008, HMV concludes that its current activities, selling new and also used games at their stores is paying off. It is outgrowing both CD, DVD and other media sales by far and while these deserve big discounts in sales prices and proposed media attentoin, gaming is one of the strongest markets in the industry.
Further adding to the significancy of these numbers is the extremely strong 2007 Q4 that the numbers are being compared to. Even hardware sales are up to par, with particularly Nintendo’s Wii and DS performing great.
Earlier I commented on the stability of the gaming market in terms of spending, and these latest figures comfirm that even for the UK market.
It remains to be seen if the more traditional market; Europe, will perform like the US, UK and China are doing and keep up strong growth figures, in a time where the economic situation cautions customers on their expenses.
It remains to be concluded that the gaming market is the one market that keeps steady spending, allowing for in-house activities that are relatively cheap. The price of a game is roughly compareable to a night in a bar!
Anyone can offer some insight on the old world’s market performance?
Gaming & E-Sports: Manuel ‘Grubby’ Schenkhuizen
Even though I have posted about Grubby before, I thought it would be nice to start the Gaming & E-Sports spree off with him, because he is the most famous Dutch gamer in the world. We are talking about a gamer that has done it all; feature in a Amsterdam Film Festival Documentary Beyond the Game, get admitted to the World Cyber Games Hall of Fame and win the Esports player of the year 2006 award.
The rest of this entry will detail some of his accomplishments and focus on what we can expect from him in the future!
Best Dutch e-sporter
Short update:
E-sports; ‘competitive playing of videogames’, has Grubby as its most famous Dutch community member. He has been interviewed by his team’s website, mymym.com, by using photographs instead of words. Good character piece by the website and worth checking out. By searching through Google you are sure to run into more pieces on this great player to get more insight!
ESL versus ESWC
Yesterday I reported on the ESL Masters prize purse of 280.000 euro, today it appears that the ESWC, another big e-sports organisation, has lost its main sponsor Nvidia. Even though they collaborated on last years finals in LA, the bad attendance and the nature of the on and off the partnership are speculated to be crucial in this final descision.
Nvidia appears to be reducing the amount of involvement in the e-sports scene, lets hope major investors like Intel are not thinking about doing the same. In terms of trends, not much to discover here, nobody knows what to expect from 2009, but it would be sad to see the 2009 season be the season to show a decline in what has been 12 years of growth in the market.