The dynamic relationship between game design and the business aspects of the gaming industry

Estimated read time 4 min read

Successful businesses and corporations often have different layers that work cohesively to produce a highly competitive and forward-thinking finished product. The gaming industry has experienced a golden age of enormous proportions over the last 30 years. Although it has been the beneficiary of internet adoption, cheap home consoles and greater visibility within the entertainment industry, many other components have helped it flourish and maximise its full potential.

The business of gaming 

Irrespective of how innovative or creative game designers are, the product will not reach the consumer or target audience most effectively without the support of strong business partners. So, although game designers have delivered consistently for over 20 years, advertisers, merchandisers, and retailers have also pioneered their approach to ensure that profit within the industry has been able to hit its potential.

The business of gaming 

You can divide the gaming industry into unique sectors, all with specific ways of developing for their audience and aiming for the target market. One of the biggest individual markets is the gambling industry, which has exploded in popularity because of ingenuity in advertising and game design. A successful business ensures that both of these facets are able to entwine and bring out the best in both. Healthy competition has driven the gambling industry to new heights. While some business analysts and economists believed the sector might plateau or dip following its exponential rise over the last decade and a half, it continues to defy the experts, covering new ground and generating ever-higher profit levels.

Gaming creativity in the casino sector

Some of the best examples within the casino gaming industry include the emergence of live casino table gaming via your mobile phone and specific game themes that have brought in tens of thousands of new gamers, such as the highly popular mystical Egyptian-themed game design you may have seen, particularly in slot gaming. In fact, the popularity of mythology-themed slots has helped to bolster the entire sector, with Greek, Norse and Roman mythology all big hits in the slot machine gaming sector.

Ingenuity in console gaming

Moving away from the casino industry, console gaming has been able to use the advances in business strategy and combine it with the highly creative developments within game design to become a truly global business. Once consoles like Xbox and PlayStation could bridge the gap between gamers and use the internet to bring them together to compete online on a truly global scale, the possibilities of the industry entered unchartered terrain. Many business game design companies that became some of the biggest names in the world kicked off as internet startups, so it’s not just the fact that more gamers could compete against each other online but also that startups were able to network and expand their business relationships online.

This helped to create and continues to fuel the immense popularity, for many reasons. For instance, the most recent Sony console, the PlayStation 5, was met with such incredible demand that millions of people could not get their hands on one, with some paying three or four times the going retail price.

Although Sony has since commented that getting your hands on one will become much easier, the groundbreaking attributes of the PlayStation 3 and 4 helped create the initial interest. In addition, the game-changing PlayStation 5 variables, from enhanced gaming graphics to smoother designs and more immersive gaming experience, have also helped to fuel this incredible demand. Business developers who focused on implementing effective advertising campaigns have also sent demand soaring, again highlighting their crucial role once game designers have completed their side of the bargain.

Ingenuity in console gaming

Conclusion

The emergence of multibillion-dollar businesses that exist solely because of the gaming industry has helped to create further levels of advertising for the sector. Twenty years ago, if you had put forward the idea that you could earn millions of dollars playing video games, and that millions of people worldwide would tune in to watch the top competitions, it’s unlikely many people would have taken you seriously.

However, esports is now one of the most prominent ways in which gaming companies advertise the quality of their game. One of the driving forces behind this is the relationship between first-person shooter games such as Counter-Strike and battle arena games like Dota 2, which are bringing in colossal numbers of people. There’s also a host of gambling markets that underpin these widely-watched tournaments, which is adding a further layer of success. The dynamic relationship is part of a more extensive culture that encourages innovation, and it is an attitude that has permeated many other levels of the gaming industry.

 

Sarah Cantley

Editorial Head at UK Blog for Business & Startup.

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