Through the Looking Glass Sharply - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 226

their ways onto major consoles after demonstrating their skill on these
newer and more porous platforms.
Aphra Kerr has situated the changes being experienced within the UK
(including Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland) and the Repub-
lic of Ireland within the context of the global political economy of the
games industry for us in Chapter 6. It would appear that the industry in
this geographical area is in a state of transition. Under basically an inde-
pendent, entrepreneurial approach games such as Grand Theft Auto , Tomb
Raider , SingStar and Little Big Planet were developed, as well as middle-
ware technologies by companies such as Havok. The tendency lately has
been for independent companies to be acquired by others and the domestic
industry put at a disadvantage by government subsidy elsewhere and an
apparent lack of skilled personnel. One would think this situation to be
a temporary, transient one. In the long run, it would appear that market
forces would come to the forefront; the industry might have a dif erent
structure and a dif erent focus, but there is just too much interest and talent
for it to languish.
Our own research started in Sweden and so it was with interest that
we read Ulf Sandqvist's chapter on the development of the Swedish game
industry. Somewhat paralleling Aphra Kerr's story of the experience in
the UK and the Republic of Ireland, Sweden's industry appears in a state
of transition. Ulf, however, tends to be guardedly optimistic about Swe-
den's future albeit with a shift in strategy. He suggests, “As long as the
technological development is rapid and Moore's law holds, it seems likely
that the majority of Swedish game developers will move over to the use of
modules available on the market. Without a large fi nancial backing it is
unlikely that new start-up companies that aim for big-budget games will
be able to compete with internally developed technology. Even the larger
companies have to adapt to this strategy. New companies, for example,
buy a game engine or physics engine and use it to create more advanced
games. By doing so they keep the development outside the company and
can focus on the other aspects of game development and still make more
advanced games. . . . The new, mobile platforms and new distribution chan-
nels have meant new opportunities especially for smaller companies and
indie developers. A large number of new Swedish companies have moved
into these markets. Even more established game developers and publishers
have started to move into these markets with their large franchises. [Thus]
with the amount of companies attracted, one must also wonder if there
will be a risk of overpopulating. It remains to be seen how many of these
new companies can overcome and if they can become more profi table than
many of their predecessors”.
The industry has a history of console developers dropping by the way-
side—Magnavox, Atari, Coleco, Commodore 64, Apple II and Sega. So it
was in 2006-2007, industry observers looked on with curiosity to see if
it was the period in which another might drop by the wayside. It did not