Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
end of that chapter, we had the same problems that each of our contributors
undoubtedly had, i.e. what do you say about the future? One thing for sure
is that the marketing approach will be dif erent. It has to be because it has
been so basic, especially at the promotion end of things. For an industry
that has been so creative in putting their of erings together, the approach
to marketing has been pretty basic. Peter and Tim like ARGs—they like
anything that is creative and successful. On the other hand, innovative
breakthroughs of service of erings tend to be associated with distribution
(cf. Lovelock 1996, 323), e.g. ATMs and online opportunities in consumer
banking. As we look at the history of marketing of video games, we see
similar breakthroughs—the success of massively multiplayer online games
(MMOGs) in Korea through Internet cafés and the present success of Zynga
in its association with Facebook in social gaming. There will be more such
opportunities in the future.
Rounding out the nature of the industry section, Claudio Feijoó con-
tributed his thoughts on the mobile gaming ecosystem from the developers'
perspective. He nicely laid out his thoughts on the future for us, “Look-
ing beyond, the role of platforms and applications belongs to the future
of mobile gaming development, but it is only a part of the story, not all.
Comparing the evolution of mobile gaming with that of online gaming, the
future importance of both the browser and the game portals emerges. In
the mid-term, mobile application developers will face the primary decision
to program in any of the so-called 'native' platforms mentioned in the chap-
ter or in a web technology. It will happen in this mid-term because the web
stack has not achieved the level of performance that is possible with native
code yet. Mobile game portals and servers will come next. These mobile
game portals have promising advantages: independence across mobile plat-
forms, provision of a seamless cross-media usage and easier multiplayer
gaming. As a result, they could be engaging enough so as to jump over the
'fi lling time' hurdle. Enjoying the best of both worlds—mobile and online
gaming—would require the supplementing of the gaming experience with
those specifi c features that make the mobile domain unique: personaliza-
tion, ubiquity and context awareness”.
Casey O'Donnell wrote the chapter on the North American game indus-
try. He noted that the long-term viability of the North American game
industry, although seemingly cemented as a leader, faces signifi cant ques-
tions related to sustainability. Sharing of basic game industry practices
remains a limiting factor for the North American game industry. Whereas
many of the base-level technologies of game development are available
freely, knowledge of how to bring those together with the broad array of
expertise, tools and business knowledge remains largely a “black art.” The
rise of “indie” game developers, digital distribution and a rapidly shifting
console industry seems to indicate that a sea change is under way through-
out the game industry, and the North American context is no exception.
Small developers, once locked out of the game industry centre have found
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