Family Games keep the Games Industry Bouyant

The UK Games Industry reports record sales for 2008 of £4.034billion per ELSPA (the games industry association). 

Leading the way in Games sale is the Wii, with it’s broad range of family based games titles, and innovative hardware.  “Videogaming is increasingly bringing families together with the introduction of so many outstanding family-based console titles,” said Michael Rawlinson, MD of ELSPA. “These have really opened up the market to those who may never have even considered playing a videogame before.”

And this is reiterated in the fact that wii sports has just become the best selling game of all time, selling now over 40million copies.  Undoubtedly the bundling of the game with the console will have contributed to the sales, but Wii Sports is the game that most people associate with the wii.

DS, Playstation and Xbox software all saw increased sales in 2008 over 2007.

Sony’s focus for 2009 is to get the PS3 profitable.  Which is a telling sign of the state of the industry.  Although there are big grabbing headlines telling of the games industry’s successes, more quietly there are the stories about EA’s scale down in operations and cessation of non-profitable titles, and publishers such as Midway fighting off bankruptcy.

Despite the increasing sales of both consoles and software, and the announcements that the games industry is “recession proof”, Sony are highlighting that it is only the profitable companies that will be able to take advantage of these circumstances, the recession harshly separating the wheat from the chaff.

Parents advised to make Better Use of Game Ratings.

The Video Games industry has been getting its house in order over the past few months, improving the rating systems used on games, the information, explanations, the visuals used to show the ratings, and industry guidelines around the ratings too.

This now highlights an altogether new problem, that despite huge efforts made by games retailers, and publishers, some parents are failing to use all of this information to protect their children.

“For 13 years, the National Institute on Media and the Family has been asking the video game industry and retailers to take responsibility to keep mature-rated video games away from kids,” said Dr. David Walsh, president and founder of the group.

“This year the industry has improved its ratings enforcement and given parents new tools when choosing the right videogame for their child. That’s a significant step in the right direction.”

A recent report produced in America produced by the Federal Trade Commission that found only 20 per cent of children who tried to purchase mature-rated games from retailers were successful, compared to data from 2003, where 55 per cent of under-age consumers bought M-rated games.

The weakness in the system lies now with the adults, the adults that purchase M-rated or 18+ games for underage children to play them, or give them as presents, or knowingly let them play their own adult games.

It is very easy for a society to pass on the responsibility for monitoring & enforcing ratings onto the games publishers and retailers. But as history has shown with Films, the cinemas aren’t the places where children are watching films past their age range, it’s at home with the parents, watching the DVD. The retailers have the guidelines, and all indications are that they are properly enforcing them at point of sale.

Parents have been given all the tools and information necessary to allow them work out whether the content is suitable for their children. It is now up to the parents to make those unpopular decisions and enforce the guidelines which have been provided at their request.

EA must get online – says EA President

Electronic Art’s Worldwide President Frank Gibneau says that EA must continue it’s push into online based games.

“It is an absolute imperative for the company to go online as fast as possible, and the more projects we can do that have scale and quality the better,” he said at an EA event in San Francisco.

“That’s where, frankly, the head and the heart of the company are, is trying to get online in a really powerful way,” he continued. “It’s a key strategy for the company to drive our online businesses as aggressively as possible. It’s clearly the future, and the future is now.”

The challenge, and the rewards, for developers is developing games that can engage and entertain in a massively multiplayer environment.  The games currently taken online by EA include Warhammer, and Star Wars.

MMOG games have traditionally revolved around the fantasy worlds, with games such as world of warcraft, with its 10 million plus subscribing players creating whole online and offline communities.  The challenge now is to take other types of games into that massively multiplayer environment. 

Many previous console games revolve around a single central character who has a mission, these games are perfect for a single player, or a small group of players playing together in a single environment.  It will be interesting to see if these types of games can move into a MMOG environment.

It maybe that we see the growth of a whole new genre of games, with the traditional single hero player becoming a thing of the past.  The biggest selling genre of games historically have been the “shoot ‘em up” type games, and this concept will need to be tailored quite heavily for a connected environment.

Some of the newer genres of games, those which have been popular with girls, women, and more maturer players will suit a massively multiplayer environment far better, picking up on the underlying social networking which plays a key part in an connected environment.

Although some of EA’s strongest games include the SIMS, and Sports games which will suit a “league” environment very well, many of their action genre games may struggle more.  Can you imagine playing Mercenaries with another several thousand mercenaries all playing head to head at the same time – you profit from Chaos, but too much chaos stops the fun.

Google Android to provide EA games to Mobile Phones

T Mobile will be the providing the first phone to use Googles Android platform to host 3 of EA’s games; Tetris, Monopoly and Bejewelled will be available in November.  These are the first games released, there are more in development, and EA is also developing games for the iPhone.

This sees google delve further into the games world, further to it’s acquisition of Lively.

EA’s comments at the London Games Industry Event Games 3.0 reinforce the thinking that that the Internet is going to be the major platform for gaming in the future.    EA’s UK Boss Keith Ramsdale said to the conference  “The next wave in gaming is to understand the trend, make sure that games are directly accessible to consumer on the internet – and key to us will be retaining those consumers once they come into our space. Whether that’s a brand or a franchise space, we need to hold on to them. The way to hold on to them is to deliver them great, ongoing content.”

Web based games, and mobile technology, and google’s platform look to be the ingrediants to a method to reach millions of people, at home, work, travelling.  Opening up the Games Market to millions more people and potential players, and presenting games developers and designers with potentially unlimited opportunities.  It’s going to be an exciting time!

Brussel’s Wants Better Warning’s On Violent Video Games

The European Commission said all EU countries should use the same age-rating system when it comes to video games and make that system known to citizens.  It also called for an EU-wide code of conduct on the sale of video games to minors to be introduced within two years, reports Elitsa Vucheva, from EUobserver.

Video games are “a very important industry for Europe,” but also one “that impacts on society,” Viviane Reding, EU commissioner for the information society and media, and Meglena Kuneva, EU consumer commissioner, said at a joint press conference in Strasbourg.

Currently, the value of the UK Games Industry exceeds that of the UK music industry, and is seeing growth rates of 25% plus each year.

In addition, 42 percent of Europeans spend between one and five hours playing video games “in a typical week”, while 11 percent spend more than 15 hours on this activity.

That is why “we have to develop a good level of information on the content of games,” in order to protect children — but also young adults — from the most violent elements contained in some of them, Ms Reding said.

Since 2003, the vast majority of EU member states have been using an age-rating system called PEGI — Pan European Games Information – developed by the video games industry itself, in order to protect the youngest users from games judged too violent.  The system includes five age categories and uses content descriptors for bad language, discrimination, drugs, fear, sex, violence or gambling.

It is currently applied by 20 member states, while three use other legislative measures. Cyprus, Luxembourg, Romania and Slovenia have no age-rating system in place.

“PEGI, as an example of responsible industry self-regulation and the only such system with almost pan-European coverage, is certainly a very good first step,” commissioner Reding stated.

“However, I believe it can be greatly improved, in Europe and beyond, by making the public more aware about its existence,” she added.

No banning

For his part, Belgian Christian Democrat MEP Ivo Belet from the European Parliament’s Committee for Culture and Education warned against the possible banning of some video games.

“Forbidding violent games or taking them off the market will not yield the result we want, as young consumers can get hold of them anyway online or via illegal downloads. Often x-rated games will only make games more attractive to young gamers,” Mr Belet stated.

The commission also said it wanted “most of all” to inform parents and educators and “let them take their responsibility” when it comes to buy or not a certain game.

Fantasy Couriers and Online Protection

Our game has been designed to be compliant with the PEGI standards and the COPPRA guidance to ensure that it is a safe and suitable environment for young people to play and learn in.  Enterprise and Business studies really starts to become a part of the curriculum at key stage 4, so the game is fully compliant to the 12+ age standards.  However, we see that primary school children are also starting to get involved with enterprise, and so we have also made the game compliant to the guidelines for 7+ age group. 

Because of the nature of the game, and game environment, we have been able to achieve these safe standards without any compromise to the players’ enjoyment of the game.  There is only one piece of game functionality that has been removed where the player is under 18 years, and this is not an integral part of the game strategy, only a side novelty.

We have also designed all communications between players to use a template system, this means that players can send each other only messages are set into the game structure.  There are no means for players to contact other players in the game, or website, except by these methods.  This means that young people can play the game safe and protected from nuisance communications.

Protection of Young Players is Key

We at Fantasy Couriers believe that parents are young people should be provided with all the information they need to make safe and informed decisions about the games that they chose to play, be they video games or web based online games.  And we have built into the game all precautions possible to ensure that our young people can play, and learn, in a safe and entertaining environment.  We would urge all games designers to heed Brussel’s advice regarding this matter as it can only make the games industry stronger.

Extracts taken from; http://www.rachel.org/en/node/6948