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In this freewheeling panel discussion from Web 2.0, three game industry leaders discuss with Mark C. Stevens the changes they've seen in the gaming world and how they believe it will develop in the future.
The gaming community is huge, with over 30 billion hours played each year. 70% of 18-34 year old, PC-using males, are gamers. But it's a changing world too. The average age is increasing, and more women are joining. And play is slowly migrating from console games to mobile devices.
The predominant business model today is advertising-supported and subscription-based. But the micro-payment sale of virtual goods and services is growing fast within the gaming worlds. Not just purchasing items like virtual real estate and tools, but paying to affect the outcome of the game. For example, you may be able to pause your online golf game in order to purchase a fix for the bad slice you just hit.
Although the large game development companies do have a lot of clout, the small ones are still able to make an impact. They can move faster to respond to gamer needs. And they will continue to partner with the large companies to share their expertise.
Branded content - games and gaming experiences which are labeled with the name of an established company or product - is currently very common and very successful. This will continue but user-created content will increase to become a very large part of the gaming experience and economy.
Online gaming has become huge but that's only the start. With the widespread arrival of broadband connections, more and more people will be interacting together in gaming worlds.
Change seems to be the word in the gaming world. Things are very different than in the early days and the rate of change will only accelerate in the future.
Mark C. Stevens is a partner in the Corporate and Intellectual Property Groups of Fenwick & West LLP, a law firm specializing in high technology matters. Fenwick & West is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with an office in San Francisco, California.
Stevens represents companies ranging from newly formed startup teams to mature public companies, venture capitalists, and investment banks involved in the information technology industries, with particular focus on complex transactions. As a lawyer and a business principal, Stevens has lead teams handling merger, acquisition, and divestiture transactions with total announced value in excess of $20 billion. He has directed over 25 initial public offerings and hundreds of strategic alliance transactions, ranging from technology and distribution partnerships to multinational joint venture transactions.
Stevens' varied background includes work from the legal, business and venture capital sides of the table. In addition, he has served on several Boards of Directors, including the Board of Mercator Software, where he was active in the sale of Mercator to Ascential Software. Stevens received his J.D., cum laude, in 1983 from Northwestern University where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and served on the Law Review. Prior to attending law school, he worked as a software engineer. Stevens received his B.S., magna cum laude, in mathematics in 1979 from Santa Clara University.
Greg Ballard has had a distinguished career in the gaming, entertainment and multimedia industries. He has served as CEO at SONICblue, makers of ReplayTV and Rio digital music players; MyFamily.com, a successful subscription-based Internet service; and 3Dfx where, over a three-year period, he grew the company from $4 million to an annualized rate of more than $400 million. He previously served as CEO and COO for Warner Custom Music, a division of Time Warner, Inc. Ballard was also president of Capcom Software, the U.S. subsidiary known for hits such as Street Fighter, Mega-Man and Resident Evil, as well as COO and CFO of Digital Pictures, a leading video game developer for Sega CD. Ballard currently sits on the board of directors for Pinnacle Systems (NASDAQ: PCLE). Ballard holds a B.A. from the University of Redlands and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Mike Cassidy has been the co-founder and CEO of three start-ups: Xfire, Direct Hit, and Stylus Innovation. Xfire helps gamers play with their friends much more easily. Xfire is also an IM designed just for gamers and has reached over 1.5 million gamers in over 100 countries. Direct Hit was a revolutionary internet search engine whose customers included MSN, Lycos, AOL, and dozens of others. Ask Jeeves acquired Direct Hit for $500 million. Stylus Innovation's flagship product was the award winning computer telephony software Visual Voice. Cassidy studied jazz piano at the Berklee College of Music. He has a B.S. (1985) and M.S. (1986) in Aerospace Engineering from MIT and graduated from Harvard Business School in 1991.
Raph Koster has been working professionally and as a hobbyist in the field of online worlds for over a decade. At SOE, he consults on all of SOE's titles, and is responsible for setting community relations policies and ongoing research into future technologies for games. He entered the industry professionally working as the creative lead and lead designer for Ultima Online, for Electronic Arts. He joined Sony in 2000. At SOE, he was the creative director for Star Wars Galaxies.Koster holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Alabama. Koster is a member of the International Game Developers Association, the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, and ASCAP. He was a nominee for MIT Technology Review's TR100 Young Innovators awards. He is the author of "A Theory of Fun for Game Design" as well as numerous articles and essays that are widely quoted and used on academic syllabi in the United States and Europe. Koster writes frequently on issues of internet community management, interactive narrative, and online games. He has spoken at conferences all over the world on game design, the legal issues of online communities, and social policy.
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