How big is the game industry??
Video Game Industry Expands Reach Far Beyond Teen-Age Boys
San Jose Mercury News, California via NewsEdge Corporation : Jan. 27--In the digital battle for
Americans' hearts and minds, one of the great charges is being led by "Donkey Kong," a blue
hedgehog and an assortment of buxom women with blazing guns.
Those video-game creations are in the vanguard of an industry whose U.S. revenues grew $700
million to $900 million in 1999, totaling almost $7 billion by the highest calculation. By one set of
measurements, the video-game business came its closest yet to a highly symbolic level: the annual
amount spent by moviegoers.
Moreover, the combined home video-game and computer-game market has expanded well beyond
adolescent boys, although it's still overwhelmingly male. Young adults are heavily involved, along
with more girls, women and even senior citizens, who like to "travel" to fictional lands by computer.
The lasting impact on children has been so powerful that many educators and technologists believe
the video-game industry has become a central part of U.S. and international culture --
recreationally, socially and psychologically.
Some games are considered audio-visual innovations that present new ways of thinking, seeing and
perceiving.
"For many of those kids, electronic games functioned as a Head Start program, preparing them for
entry into the Digital Age," said Henry Jenkins, director of the graduate program in comparative
media studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"Characters like Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog are as central to the imaginations of contemporary
children as Fred Flintstone or Bugs Bunny were to the imaginations of baby boomers."
Next month, MIT will be the site of a national conference on how computer and video games have
"come of age" ( media-in-transition.mit.edu The premise is that
electronic games deserve as much serious study as any other art form.
Key executives, some of whom left more traditional industries to join game companies, see their
products as the inevitable winners in a world where lives are reshaped by the rapidly evolving
technology of interactive entertainment.
"It is a phenomenon that many people haven't recognized, in part because of an older media that
doesn't see it," said John Riccitiello, president of Redwood City's Electronic Arts, the dominant
company publishing games for all brands of consoles as well as personal computers. "By
phenomenon, I mean as big a global cultural influence as Hollywood and television has been."
At this point, the revenue comparison with the roughly $7.5 billion Americans spend on movie
tickets is considered misleading by some analysts, despite its symbolic value.
That's because the film industry has huge additional streams of income: video-store rentals, video
sales and pay-per-view TV, to name just a few. Game companies are salivating over new
opportunities, especially through the online gaming that's not yet part of the industry's annual
financial snapshots. But they don't expect to immediately develop anything similar to Hollywood's
overall economic clout.
There's also a palpable fear in video-game circles over the heated criticism of some characters,
graphics and action as either highly sexual or gruesomely violent. Although devotees rhapsodize
about the medium's impact on imagination, they recoil from any suggestion that games could
instigate anti-social behavior, just as the music, film and TV industries do when they're under
scrutiny.
Video-game lobbyists say the industry's "trigger-happy" image has been overblown after killings by
kids described as fans of sophisticated shooting games. Game defenders point fretfully to the large
numbers of sports, puzzle and children's titles, as well as to a rating system that sometimes includes
additional content information.
But despite the touchy political climate, video games have an enormous momentum that's part
social, part technological.
The Interactive Digital Software Association, which is helping to organize the MIT conference,
crusades against the stereotypical depiction of gamers as nothing but testosterone-delirious
high-school boys.
"This is an industry that's not only increasingly broad in its appeal, but one with a range of products
that's increasingly complex, challenging and creative," said Doug Lowenstein, the association's
president.
Getting girls and women involved remains a challenge, but there are intriguing exceptions. Nintendo
says 34 percent of the people using handheld Game Boy units are female -- a sharp contrast with
the 20 percent figure for the Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64 consoles.
Julie Northrop, 29, has been playing video games since she was 10. As a senior sales associate for
the Electronics Boutique store at Concord's Sun Valley Mall, she sees exactly where the market is
diversifying.
"There are a lot of games coming out that are role-playing games, like the `Final Fantasy' series, that
a lot of women are buying," Northrop said.
She also has noticed more female interest in sports games, particularly soccer, and a wider selection
of titles geared toward girls. The IDSA points to the release of the first Barbie CD-ROM in 1996
as a major step.
Age is another indication of a broadening market. The IDSA's research shows that a majority of the
most frequent game players, whether they're using PCs or consoles, are over 18.
"Half of our business is people over 18," said Electronic Arts' Riccitiello, a former Sara Lee Corp.
and Wilson Sporting Goods Co. executive. "Once someone is a video-game player, they never
stop."
People start at all ages, too. The developer of the game "Daggerfall" estimates it has attracted
thousands of seniors, many in retirement homes, who simply like to "walk" through the immense
virtual environment of towns, castles, caves and a half-million characters.
That kind of eye-popping technology underpins the attraction for newcomers and die-hards alike. It
includes exotic 3-D imagery, almost photo-realistic visuals, game-play that simulates the timing and
fluidity of human movement and player controls that heighten the sensation of being "inside" the
games.
Riccitiello believes game development is only a year or two behind the quality of the
computer-generated animation in the "Toy Story" movies.
"Not all video games are art. Many of them are banal, formulaic and repetitive," Jenkins of MIT
said. "But some video games have started to really explore the properties of digital media and the
opportunities for new kinds of interactive storytelling in a way that cannot be matched anywhere
else in the culture."
Jenkins said "fewer and fewer" of his students want to be film directors; "more and more" want to
be game designers. Jenkins points to numerous recent movies, including "Go," "Existenz" and "Run
Lola Run," as borrowing from the creative techniques of games.
The triumph of interactive entertainment is a foregone conclusion among game adherents. Gaming
may not steal people's interest from all passive entertainment -- "Nothing is a significant challenge to
the big-screen experience," asserted film-industry analyst Paul Dergarabedian -- but it's going to
steal time from something.
Nintendo was the major driver in the industry's 1999 gains because of red-hot Pokemon sales.
Pokemon was far from spectacular technologically, featuring 2-D graphics on the 8-bit Game Boy
devices, but it highlighted the industry's power to launch a phenomenon. From its video-game
origins, Pokemon has expanded into a heavyweight force in the TV, movie, toy and licensing
businesses.
This year's gaming climate will be dominated by the wait for the introduction of the PlayStation 2,
and for more details about a new Nintendo system called Dolphin.
But some insiders, such as Arra Yerganian of Infogrames North America in San Jose, are looking
further down the road.
Yerganian, senior vice president of marketing for the game publisher, envisions workers swapping
game tips through their personal digital assistants during meetings.
"You know," Yerganian said. "During the boring meetings."
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