Journal of Information and Computational Science ISSN: 1548-7741

The Business, Culture and Technology of Video Games: A Review

Ajay Kumar Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi [email protected]

Abstract Video games are one of the youngest addition to the popular mediums of entertainment. In its rather short span of existence, it has surpassed all other forms of entertainment in terms of revenues. It is getting increasingly influential in terms of socio- cultural impact. With increased access to better mobile devices acting as gaming platforms and cheaper internet, the once-neglected populace in India has become a lucrative market for large multinational corporations in the sector. This paper takes a look at some of the developments that establish video games as an important emerging medium of entertainment in India in the light of technological developments leading to cultural changes.

Keywords: video games, entertainment media, culture, technology, media economy

1. Introduction

The second half of the 20th century was marked by upheavals and disruptions, most prominent of them being technological along with economic and political. Working together, these have the capacity to alter society and culture significantly. This period saw the emergence and proliferation of a new medium of entertainment - a medium that was driven by the latest technology of the time and that went on to become a significant economic entity in a short duration - it was the video games.

Video Games emerged in the early 1970s and within a short period became a huge influence on initially the American culture and subsequently most of the West. Of late, it has also made inroads in developing economies across the globe as a popular medium of entertainment. In its short history, the video games industry (USD 99.6 Billion in 2016) surpassed the over 100-year-old film industry ($88 billion in 2016) in terms of worldwide revenue. [1]

Mediums of communication and entertainment have had a significant role in altering the course of humanity by affecting the flow of knowledge, information and culture. Cinema as a paid medium of mass entertainment is said to be invented in 1895 with the Lumiere Brothers’ exhibition of recorded motion pictures to an audience in France. In no time, it reached the United Kingdom and North America where several other inventors, including William Friese-Greene and Thomas Edison respectively, were working on similar inventions. This was followed by their spread across the world. Within a year, it was introduced to the Indian population. India went on to become the largest producers of films in the world, at least in terms of volume if not revenue. Much earlier, Johannes

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Gutenberg invented one of the most important pieces of communication technology, the modern printing press, in the mid-15th century in Germany enabling mass printing of books and thus widespread dissemination of knowledge. It took almost 100 years for the technology to reach the Indian subcontinent.

What constitutes leisure and how do people entertain themselves has also been changing with changes in time. In modern times these two have gained more importance than ever before. Forces controlling the production of the entertainment media have grown in power and prominence. The desire of multinational corporations to take control of this important aspect of the modern human has a significant influence on the world economy.

2. The commodity that is video games

Video Games are a powerful commodity now. One single copy of a AAA game (big- budget games produced by big studios) for consoles (dedicated computer systems meant for playing games) costs 60 USD (approximately Rs 4000). The most expensive video game to be ever produced was slated to cost 500 million USD (Approximately Rs 350 Crore) [2]. In contrast, Avatar, the most expensive film ever made cost 478 million USD [3]. In five years since it was first released, a video game titled Grand Theft Auto V, published by New York-based multinational gaming company Rockstar Games, became the best-selling entertainment product, across all media, in human history. The company earned over 6 billion USD in revenue from this one game in a little over 5 years. [4]

Games have graduated from being just a medium of entertainment to become a medium of information as well. From the marketing of products and services to consumers to teaching computer programming and art history to kids, from military and medical training to treating depression, video games are now ubiquitous. These novel uses that stakeholders have found for the medium has made the tough task of defining the medium even more complicated.

However, the video game industry in the west is going through what financial commentator for the Fortune Magazine, Cyrus Sanati called a ‘nostalgic and creative laziness’ that is ‘alienating potential young consumers and angering the older ones’ [5]. Sanati’s claim is supported by the fact that sales of video games in the US have been falling since reaching a peak of USD 17 billion in 2010. In short, the video games market is shrinking there.

Therefore, while for the average American gamer, most of the recently produced video game content are a ‘mash-up’ of characters, narratives and scenes from older games and Hollywood action movies (things that have long been a part of the American life and culture), for a majority of the adult population in the emerging Asian markets and its ilk in other parts of the world, it is their first experience of this new means of leisure entertainment activity. With the majority of their population being youth, who are increasingly technology-oriented and wielding higher spending power than ever before, consumer markets like India are a perfect place for the international game companies to make headway to promote gaming.

Volume 9 Issue 12 - 2019 473 www.joics.org Journal of Information and Computational Science ISSN: 1548-7741

Recent developments in Asia have led analysts to predict far-reaching role of Asian markets for the video game industry. Tim Merel, managing director at Digi-Capital, a research firm was quoted as saying, "Asia is becoming the biggest growth driver of economic value in mobile/online games, with the best games companies' revenue growth and profit margins being the envy of foreign competitors."[6] According to their research report, mobile and online video games primarily getting a boost from Asian markets were predicted to account for more than 60 per cent of the total market share of $100 billion by 2017.

In a major shift in the last few years, many of the biggest companies hitherto producing expensive AAA games solely for the console platform (or for the PC platform to some extent) have ventured into the mobile games segment. In-game purchases and microtransactions, tactics widely used in mobile gaming, are increasingly being employed in the console segment as well and proving to be immensely profitable for the gaming companies. For the first time, in-app purchases and microtransactions are bringing in more money for these companies than the actual sale of the games. This has been true for EA and Ubisoft, two of the top gaming companies in the world, alike.

With video games exercising such a significant influence on the life of people and the politics and economies of countries, it is only justified that video games get the long- overdue attention in academia, apart of course from the numerous effects studies. Recognising the importance of the medium, universities in many countries have started programmes incorporating video games. For example, the University of Southern California in collaboration with the School of Cinematic Arts’ Interactive Media & Games Division and the Viterbi School of Engineering’s Department of Computer Science is now offering a Game Design programme. The university claims it to be “one of the top game design programs in North America”. The New York University has the Game Centre established at its Tisch School of the Arts that offers more than 60 courses exploring various aspects of video games including their history, design, development and their relationship with the players. Leading academic publishers have come up with journals dedicated to the study of various aspects of video games. Talking about the breadth of the study of video games, Wolf and Perron (2003) write: “The video game is now considered as everything from the ergodic (work) to the ludic (play); as narrative, simulation, performance, remediation, and art; a potential tool for education or an object of study for behavioural psychology; as a playground for social interaction; and, of course, as a toy and a medium of entertainment.” [7]

3. Video games as cultural phenomenon

Ever since video games became part of the popular culture in the 1980s in America, scholars from diverse fields have tried to understand its nature and effect on the personal and social level. As with all other media, starting right from the printed books to photography, cinema and television, the video game has met with a lot of hostility, mostly on account of its perceived adverse effects on the players, especially children. Effects studies of video games abound worldwide. However, research literature seems to have willfully ignored the economy of production and consumption of video games and their relation to other socio-cultural factors.

Volume 9 Issue 12 - 2019 474 www.joics.org Journal of Information and Computational Science ISSN: 1548-7741

According to Huizinga’s (1980) explanation, a culture function comprises meaning, significance, social associations and expressive values. He asserts that play is not only a necessity that subserves culture but in fact, it becomes culture [8]. Communication itself being a cultural function of its respective times is obviously not untouched from the characteristics of play.

As a medium of mass consumption that emerged in the 1970s, video games as we know today is still in its infancy. Starting with entertainment as their sole function, video games have increasingly been used to serve several diverse functions owing to its versatility, inclusivity and customizability. As a form of new media, video games are finding application in political and social activism, scientific experiments, medical applications, marketing, education, and military training, among others. It now takes various roles as a media, as a simulation activity, as a virtual world, as a social setup, and as a time commitment and even as a learning tool.

Murray (1997) draws a parallel between the recently emergent video games and the age-old cultural form of expression – the folk tales, both being plot-centric and having a clear goal. Both involve protagonists overcoming problems in order to complete a quest [9].

In the west, video games had become an integral part of the social and cultural experiences, more so of childhood, by the end of the 1980s. In India, however, it is only recently that video games have started to evolve as a medium significant enough to draw the attention of game producing companies, as well as academic scholarship.

In 2015 alone, at least four major gaming events were conducted in Bangalore, Pune and Thiruvananthapuram. The conferences catered to interest groups as diverse as pocket gamers, game developers, indie gamers among others. International organisations are trying to figure out how to get Indian players to pay for mobile games. At the 2015 edition of Pocket Gamer Connects Bangalore, a global mobile games conference organised by Pocket Gamer, a United Kingdom-based leading media brand in the mobile games industry, in association with India’s Reliance Games one session was dedicated to discussing strategies to delve deeper in the SAARC region. With thousands of free to play game available at the disposal of the consumers and millions of potential consumers waiting to be tapped, global gaming giants are making headway into the mobile gaming sector focussing markets like India.

4. Technology and politics

Science may not wait for permission from politics to evolve but technology does. Because science evolves in the laboratories but in order to become technology it has to have interaction with people - something, that politics is closely concerned with. In the case of games, the technologies that are of prime concern deal with computers, computer programming languages, the internet, mobile phones, and telecommunications.

Software developers use computers to write software programs using programming languages like C++ and Java. The internet is widely used for interactions among the

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developers and also to get as well as disseminate knowledge, information, and the finished products. Mobile and telecommunication technologies have altered the way people send, receive and process information forever. Which technologies would be made available to the people and when depends to a large extent on the political disposition. And then, people are not a homogenous whole. So, which group of people will get access to the technology, ‘legally’, is also decided by the powers that be. In terms of media, it is also what is allowed to be produced is also controlled. This brings in the idea of censorship. Out of all the media, video games are the only ones (at least in most democratic setups across the world) along with films that have to undergo screening before being made available to the people.

In developing countries like India, the effect is more pronounced as most of the times, these technologies are developed somewhere else and then are adopted here later. For example, 3G technology for mobile telephony and data transmission was invented and adopted in Japan and the US around 2001, much before it was launched in India in 2008.

5. Conclusion

As more international companies pour money to lure the Indian population, more content customised towards the market is expected to be created. This is expected to further strengthen the ties of the players with the content through better engagement.

Increased attention to quality education and training in various aspects of game development would be a crucial step towards strengthening the industry. As more Indians play digital games and become comfortable paying for quality content, Indian developers could look forward to developing content that is informed by the local socio- cultural sensibilities.

References

[1] Newzoo, “The Global Games Market Reaches $99.6 Billion in 2016, Mobile Generating 37%”, (2016) Retrieved on 03 August 2018 from https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/global-games-market-reaches-99-6-billion-2016- mobile-generating-37/.

[2] R. Grover and M. Nayak, “Activision plans $500 million date with 'Destiny'”, Reuters, (2014, May 6) Retrieved July 16, 2018, from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-activision-destiny/activision-plans-500-million-date- with-destiny-idUSBREA4501F20140506.

[3] C. Stockdale and J. Harrington, “From 'Transformers' to 'Avatar,' these are the 50 most expensive movies ever made”, USA Today, (2018, July 6) Retrieved July 16, 2018, from https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2018/07/06/transformers-avatar-50-most- expensive-movies-ever-made/762931002/.

Volume 9 Issue 12 - 2019 476 www.joics.org Journal of Information and Computational Science ISSN: 1548-7741

[4] J. Batchelor, “GTA V is the most profitable entertainment product of all time”, (2018, April 9) Retrieved on May 20, 2018, from https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-04-09-gta-v-is-the-most-profitable- entertainment-product-of-all-time.

[5] C. Sanati, “The video game industry is growing old, lazy, and boring”, Fortune, (2015, June 15) Retrieved March 7, 2016, from http://fortune.com/2015/06/15/video-game-industry-innovation.

[6] J. Brightman, “Mobile gaming to push industry above $100 billion by 2017”, Gamesindustry.biz, (2014, January 14) Retrieved March 7, 2016, from http://www.gamesindustry.biz.

[7] M. J. P. Wolf and B. Perron, “The video game theory reader”. New York: Routledge, (2003).

[8] J. Huizinga, “Homo Ludens: A study of the play-element in culture”, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, (1980).

[9] J. H. Murray, “Hamlet on the holodeck: The future of narrative in cyberspace”, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, (1997).

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