As the traditional console and PC packaged goods game industry slows in growth, the mobile and social game segments of the market are booming. More and more social games and mobile seats have a bigger voice at tradeshows and conferences, too, revealing how influential this fresh-faced side of the game development business has become.
At the DICE Summit, traditional game developers from Blizzard, BioWare and experienced independents tipped their hats to the disruptive influence of social media in the interactive entertainment business, trying to learn from these influences while remaining set in their hardcore game development space.
“We have never had a chance to reach so many people so fast with something so easy to play,” said Greg Zeschuk, co-founder of Electronic Arts’ developer, BioWare, describing Zynga’s CityVille, which exploded to 100 million users in under two months on Facebook.
Bioware’s other co-founder, Ray Muzyka, expects to see a major wave of growth that will impact diehard PC and console gamers: “A lot of existing players are going to have to adapt in order to thrive and survive,” he said. “New players are going to come into this market and surprise the heck out of us.”
Bruce Shelley, co-founder of the now-dissolved Ensemble Studios and creator of Age of Empires, has become so enamored of social games he started developing Facebook games and contracted with Zynga, learning how to adapt to the short development cycles. On the subject of starting an independent game studio, Shelley is experienced. He was once certain a wave of opportunity for studio-starting entrepreneurs like that wouldn’t come around again. Yet, he said, “…there has never been a better time to start a game studio. I have this vision of a dam breaking and all of this opportunity rushing downhill.”
[Source: VentureBeat]
