The Evolving European Video Game Software Ecosystem - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 204

commercial entity active in the marketplace, integrating one or more roles;
and (3) a relationship is the expression of an interaction between roles or
actors (Ballon 2007). Related to this is the concept of business ecosystems
(Moore 1996; Iansiti and Levien 2004), which emphasizes viability and
sustainability in all parts of a system, relationships of symbiosis and com-
petition between actors and how some fi rms become dominant in business
ecosystems while other service in niche roles.
The traditional video game software value network typically includes
game development, middleware production, publishing, marketing, distri-
bution, retail and consumption (De Prato el al. 2010). For some games,
community support and further content development may follow retail.
These roles may be taken up by game developers, publishers, distributers,
retailers and consumers, but also by fi rms whose main activity is typically
outside the video game software value network, notably console manu-
facturers. For online and mobile games, the value network has further
evolved and more new actors have entered (see the following and Feijoó,
this volume).
It could be noted that this value network resembles that of many content
and media industries (more than those of ICT industries), which typically
includes the steps of content creation, content publication, content distri-
bution, content retail and content exhibition/consumption. These actors
and roles are further elaborated in the subsequent sections, with an eye on
European strengths and weaknesses.
Game Development
Game development is the process of content creation in the video game
industry. It includes activities such as designing, prototyping, pre-producing,
producing and testing games (Kerr 2006). The game development role may
be taken up either by (1) independent third party developers or by (2) internal
teams of publishing companies (Miles and Green 2008; Kerr 2006).
We found no good estimates of the economic importance of this part
of the value network, neither globally nor at the European level. 5 As an
indication of its size, we provide some fi gures for some national indus-
tries. In France in 2007, it was estimated that there were some 114 stu-
dios employing altogether fewer than twenty-fi ve hundred people. The
“Nordic” games industry employed thirty-seven hundred people work-
ing for some 260 registered companies in 2007 (Norwegian Ministry of
Culture and Church Af airs 2008), whereas 140 Swedish game developer
companies employed almost twelve hundred people and had revenues of
about €120 million (1.1 billion SEK) (Sandqvist, this volume). Kerr (this
volume) refers to various estimates of the size of the UK games industry.
Although methodological dii culties abound, it seems like more than two
hundred UK video game industries directly employ some seven to ten
thousand people. In comparison, in the U.S., the video game software