GDS314 - Week 1

this unit is about games as a money-making venture

some ways of generating profit are: 

• mircro-transactions 

  • provides immediate satisfaction 

  • designed for a longer duration of play 

  • designed for "new" audiences 

  • integration of mechanics and analytics 

  • easy to understand and usually low friction 

    • (e.g item available upon unlock; the barrier to getting what the player wants is as low as possible) (high friction is something like cancelling a subscription) 

  • many players supported by a few big spenders (aka whales) 

  • core game loop driving longterm monetary involvement 

• expansions/DLCs

• figurines/toy-to-life

• upfront payment 

• subscriptions 

• demo-to-premium unlock 

• advertisements (usually on free-to-play games) 

• donation model 

• Global Games Report is a good way to monitor industry trends from year to year 

• YoY means year on year growth - e.g. +7.8 YoY growth means a 7.8% increase from the year before 

• the Middle East and Africa are beginning to emerge as a region on the Global Games Market 

  • countries that have weaker currencies (comparative to game sell currancy, e.g. USD) are more likely to pirate games 

  • a good solution is to price games to include those countries 

  • it's also worth remembering that if someone is willing to go to all the effort of pirating a game, they are most likely to never buy it at full price 

• mobile games are usually the biggest sources of profit

  • the barrier to entry is extremely low 

  • everyone has a mobile phone 

  • people in lower socio-economic areas are more likely to have a phone than a console 

• the top 10 countries by revenue is a really good way to identify languages into which a game can be translated 

  • Hindi, Spanish, English and Chinese will account for the majority of global population 

• in terms of apps, upfront payments have decreased significantly whilst in-app purchases are accounting for more and more of the overall revenue)