The North American Game Industry - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 91

Source code and asset management is of vital importance to the game
development process. Perforce is the leading source code and asset manage-
ment system in use at established game development studios. Perforce is
free for individuals, with tiered pricing for organizations on a “per seat”
licensing structure. Perforce's extensive support for the kinds of fi les pro-
duced by artists is one of the primary reasons for its prevalence.
Support software includes technologies, such as Autodesk's 3-D Studio
Max and Maya modelling and animation packages. Adobe Photoshop is
widely used for texturing 3-D models and creating 2-D art assets. Many of
these tools have additional “plug-ins” or “add-ons” that make their func-
tionality more specifi cally honed for the game development process. Gen-
eral “oi ce” software packages, such as Microsoft's Oi ce Suite, are used
throughout the organizational process of a game company's functioning.
A growing number of F/OSS alternatives to commercial middleware has
emerged. The various licenses by which F/OSS projects are released have
a signifi cant impact on whether they can be used as middleware for con-
sole-based games. Because games developed for consoles are also covered
by non-disclosure agreements with the console manufacturers, any F/OSS
license that mandates modifi cations made to a F/OSS project be released
back to the public typically go unused by game developers. In particular,
there are numerous game engines that are available as OSS. However, many
of these engines have relatively limited art asset pipelines, which make them
more dii cult to use in commercial game development. Even F/OSS alterna-
tives for modelling and animation have emerged in the Blender project.
It could be argued that this growing number of freely available compo-
nents of game development makes the game industry “open.” However,
as Chapter 1 indicated, the software of a game is only part of what goes
into a game. Thus, it is what is added to middleware, engines and support
software by artists, engineers and game designers that ultimately results in
a game. Game development studios either through choice or by accident
do not share broader production practices or how all the pieces of game
development come together. It is this aspect of game development which my
research examines (O'Donnell 2009a, 2011a, 2012).
REPRESENTATIVE ORGANIZATIONS
The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) lobbies on the part of the
North American game industry. The ESA is a trade organization that rep-
resents the interests of manufacturers and publishers in Washington DC.
The ESA maintains a separate branch in Canada as well. Their primary
areas of lobbying are combating copyright infringement on game software
and government censorship of games. In recent years, as the ESA has sup-
ported increasing copyright legislation unpopular with game developers,
some notable publishers have withdrawn their membership in the organiza-
tion. However, the majority of its members remain.