CFP : New Challenges for the Video Game Industry
Par olivier le samedi 17 janvier 2009, 16:04 - CFP - Lien permanent
Un appel à articles pour la revue de l'IDATE Communications et Stratégies, coordonnée Par Edward Castronova et Laurent Michaud
All platforms combined, the video game software market in the world's top three markets (Japan, USA and Europe) could represent close to 30 billion EUR by 2012. It is a market that is evolving constantly, through new media, mobile phones and the web, while home and handheld console sales are also enjoying double-digit growth. This tremendous success, which now puts the video game market ahead of cinema and close on the heels of the music industry, can be attributed to its rising popularity across the board – from hardcore gamers to occasional players. The growing base of residential internet users and the popularity of online gaming on both the PC and home consoles are helping to spur this growth, while the mobile internet is looming as the next frontier for the European industry to conquer. Video games encompass both a technological and an artistic component, indissociable and intertwined, which make for their uniqueness and their appeal as sources of entertainment, information and even training.
Innovation is an industry mainstay. It absorbs existing network, imaging, graphic, animation and artificial intelligence technologies, borrows from the physical world, the IT universe and relies on them to deliver a steady new crop of immersion experiences. These elements give rise to questions over the sector's endogenous development potential:
• What drives and enables creativity in video games? How do we measure its capacity for renewal in a globalised market? Should special value be placed on creativity? In what way?
• How are gaming platforms evolving? What features and functions might they be equipped with in 2015? What role might they play in the digital home?
• Who is responsible for which information along the value chain, from the design studio to gamers, by way of the publisher and distributor? How does this information circulate? Does it come back to its source, and in what form? How is this information re-injected into each stage along the value chain?
• These introductory elements also bring us back to questions over the outlets that video games can create into other arenas outside the scope of entertainment:
- What are the development prospects for serious gaming applications? What forecasting exercise can be performed in this regard in the defence, healthcare, security, training and retail sectors?
- What is the development outlook for persistent universes outside the scope of gaming? What form of governance can we imagine for these universes capable of attracting millions of people? Might (and can) they be regulated?
Pour un appel plus détaillé, voir le fichier PDF en lien CFP Communication et stratégies.