Predictions that games will keep growing

For those of you looking to get into the games industry, here’s something to convince those skeptical friends and family members. A recent Arstechnica article reports that the games industry, which has been growing like crazy, is predicted to keep on growing. The games industry took in almost $42 billion last year. A PriceWaterhouseCooper report predicts that it’ll grow to $68 billion by 2012.

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UMBC 3rd Annual Digital Entertainment Conference

First, the announcment:

UMBC’s Game Developer’s Club along with the Computer Science Department, is hosting their annual Digital Entertainment Conference on April 12 from 10:30am - 6:00pm in Lecture Hall 3 in the Administration Building. This all day event includes speakers from local video game companies like Breakaway, Big Huge Games, and Firaxis. They’ll be speaking about different aspects of the video game industry, including art, programming, and design. If you have any interest in getting into the industry or just playing games, mark your calendars and come join us on April 12!

DEC’s official web site: www.umbcgdc.org/dec/
For Facebook members, you can join the DEC event here:
www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=9446589599

This has really been a great event in the past. It is open to the public, so whether you are a UMBC student or not, if you want to find out more about what the games industry is really like, you should come.

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XKCD on E. Gary Gygax

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Gaming sales growing much faster than music or movies

Ars technica has a post Growth of gaming in 2007 far outpaces movies, music summarizing the health of the gaming industry in 2007.

“2007 was a banner year for video gaming, and the industry has the figures to prove it. The Entertainment Software Association announced today that total sales for 2007 were $18.85 billion, with $9.5 billion of that spent on games (both PC and console) and $9.35 billion on consoles.”

Most of the software sales (70%) were for console games with handhelds accounting for another 20% and PC games picking up the last 10%. But here’s a quote I fund most interesting.

“There were also some changes in terms of who was purchasing the games. Two groups whose game-buying habits changed drastically during 2007 were people over age 35 (guilty) and females. Much of that is due to the incredible popularity of the Nintendo Wii, which has made gaming accessible to a whole host of people who would otherwise have never picked up a controller.”

and then this graph tells the story visually.

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THQ buys Big Huge Games

Timonium-based Big Huge Games, makers of Age of Empires III and the Rise of Nations/Rise of Legends series, announced on January 15th that they’re being acquired by games publishing powerhouse THQ.

According to the press release, Big Huge Games, with all 100 employees, will become a wholly owned subsidiary of THQ, presumably staying at their current location in Maryland. They had published some games with Microsoft, but were trying to branch out into other platforms. Since publication and distribution are such a critical component in the success of a game, this is probably a good thing for reaching those platforms. It will certainly be interesting to see what changes, if any, result.

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Randy Pausch’s last lecture

The farewell lecture by CMU graphics Professor Randy Pausch that Marc Olano blogged about earlier today is now available on you tube.

It’s hard to watch without feeling an ache.

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Game Education giant Randy Pausch gives farewell lecture at CMU

Randy Pausch got the notice of the graphics community by building a virtual reality system on the super-cheap with off-the-shelf components, then doing real user-study based experiments with it to tell which VR methods worked and which didn’t. He got the notice of the computer science community with Alice, a scripted 3D animation program to teach introductory programming. And, he got the notice of the games industry by founding the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University, where he has been a Professor of Computer Science for the past ten years.

Recently, he learned that the pancreatic cancer he has been fighting for the past year is back, and incurable. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has an excellent story on his farewell lecture at CMU Tuesday.

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12 year old gets $6.5M for gaming company

When I saw this on Slashdot this morning I had to check the calendar to see if it was April first and the link to make sure it wasn’t a story from the Onion.

“A Silicon Valley company co-founded by a 12-year-old has just raised $6.5 million in venture capital. PlaySpan, based in Santa Clara, Calif. says it offers game publishers a technology that lets users make payments and shop for other items. It calls itself the first “publisher-sponsored in-game commerce network.” Arjun Mehta, a 6th grader, says on his Web site that he is passionate about software that can make the game experience more “rewarding,” and that he started the company last year in his garage. He paid for it from earnings made from selling online game items he won.” (link)

PlaySpan’s web site says that it is “based in Silicon Valley with offices in Mumbai and Shanghai.” While I don’t doubt Arjun’s role as some sort of “founder”, he’s surely a figurehead at this point. I mean, what would happen to the company if your chief executive had to take a week off to finish his big science fair project? Well, maybe he has people who do that kind of stuff for him these days. Having him as your designated “founder” certainly is good for publicity, in any case.

Update (9/20): Akshay points us to an item on VentureBeat on this. Check on the first comment: “The story about 12 year old co-founder is a big oversell…I know because I broke the story on funding two days ago. The CEO Karl Mehta and Arjun’s dad is the real guy behind it…arjun just came up with part of the idea for it, and is not really involved with the business per se. Arjun’s mention on the site is a gimmick which will be rectified soon…the release doesn’t mention him and for good reason.“

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UMBC GAIM mentioned in Business Gazette

The Business Gazette has an article on serious games today, focusing especially on Maryland companies Will Interactive, Breakaway, and Firaxis. I was interviewed for the article, and it closes with a mention of the new UMBC GAIM programs!

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World series of video games on CBS

This weekend CBS will air the first of four shows on the World Series of Video Games sponsored in part by Intel. The New York Times has an article, Video Game Matches to Be Televised on CBS that has a good overview.

“The magic of television has already transformed everything from motorcycle acrobatics to poker into living-room spectator sports, not to mention turning competitive singing into a national obsession. Next on the list: video games. Tomorrow at noon, CBS, the august home of the Masters and March Madness, will become the first broadcast network in the United States to cover a video game tournament as a sporting event.”

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