The Gaming Industry Coup: A Revolution

When I was born, the face of the gaming industry was ATARI. Games like Pacman and Galaxy were instant sensations. Growing up as a kid I remember buying my first gaming console. Mario, Street Fighter and Mortal Combat were trending games among kids. The latter two mostly involved two fighters beating each other to pulp until one of the two was knocked out. A player could rip off the head along with the skeleton which my mother thought was really disturbing and she was worried it might have a negative effect. Understandable on her part, their generation grew up with board games! Howsoever funny it may sound in context with today’s times, but this issue was even taken up by US courts and a regulatory body (ESRB) was formed which decided the age group for the audience of video games. But since then the gaming industry has come a long way. As the resistance to gaming started fading away, the number of game developers also started growing and gradually gaming industry became a major part of the entertainment industry.

Dependent completely on technology, developers were banking upon ideas and innovation which is clearly visible in the beautiful SEGA games that were developed with the limited resources developers had, and hence I prefer to call myself a SEGA kid. Gradually, marketers spotted opportunities in this industry and funds started flowing in and hence a lot of talented game developers and freelancers. Gradually consoles started getting better and the transition of console gaming to PC gaming happened simultaneously. Sony’s PlayStation (PS) and Nintendo took the gaming experience to newer levels. Today, a 5 year old handles a cell phone which can offer a gaming experience far richer and complex than one could have ever imagined in the 1990s. From a business point of view, the industry is full of opportunities to earn a lot of capital. Some programmers even live off pity cash while working on creative and innovative games that they hope will fetch them a handsome amount. Gaming today has become an effective form of story-telling and education, and business organisations realize this with even digital service providers like Tata Sky using Educational games to lure customers. Furthermore, with new technology elements helping to bring to life more virtual reality forms, the gaming experience has started to become more intense and addictive with a promise of roping in even more customers, and the ease of access of programming tools for programmers and feature rich devices for consumers, acts as a catalyst in this scenario. 

From the game of Checkers that my parents used to play to the 2D Checkers that I used to play on my SEGA to the 3D Checkers my niece plays on her dad’s iPad, the concept from a marketer’s point of view is the same – to sell entertainment. And clearly, marketers in this field of technology need to identify their audience as no matter which generation, not everyone loves Checkers as a game. Wise to remember, ‘what is tech for some, maybe yuck for others.’ I guess that is the prime reason we have genres, different people liking different kind of stuff. My mother hates gaming to the extent to which I love it. Generation gap, cultural gap, thinking differences and what not, all contribute to the formation of new streams of technology. It is exciting to think what kind of technologies (not only gaming) future has in store for us. Just thinking of theories which say humans are nothing more than characters in an infinitely graphic-rich computer simulation gives me goosebumps. Now, whether such a technology makes a person lazy as some say, or intelligent as I say, one can’t deny that it has become an essential part of our life, and we are addicted and somewhat dependent upon it. Or as Kelly Clarkson would say ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’, right?!

ARAAF AFZAL

Marketing and Finance (Batch of 2016) 

SITM