An interesting story over on the CNN web site talks about preserving the history of older games and their place in the ever-growing industry. While pointing out that the TV, film and music indstries have a way of showing off their history, the video game industry has yet to join the party.

But recent strides have the games preservation movement trying to catch up. Ottumwa, Iowa, has the International Video Game Hall of Fame and the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY, maintains a collection of more than 20,000 video game related items. Even the Smithsonian is getting into the act in 2012 with a section called The Art of Video Games.

Bob Bates of Legend Entertainment is encouraged by the movement: Read More

1Up.com did an interesting look at video game ads from July of 1990, pulling the ads from GamePro and Electronic Gaming Monthly and other magazines from the time.

The article includes such memorable games as Nuclear War, RBI Baseball 2 and Rollerball. There were a few classics in there, particularly SimCity. There were also products such as game tapes and even a neoprene thumb protector for the hardcore gamer.

It's a fun little trip down memory lane. 

Game Developer magazine has just published their third annual Game Career Guide, a special edition for aspiring game creators that want to get into the industry.

The guide is being given away for free via digital download and has more than 100 pages of content. According to Gamasutra: Read More

The highly anticipated sequel to the original StarCraft will be released in about two weeks, and while gamers can't wait to get their hands on the game, Blizzard should be anxious to get it out the door.

According to an online report in the Wall Street Journal, Activision Blizzard has spent more than $100 million on the game, a number that would make some movie executives hesitate. But the company expects to get much more than that when the game hits shelves on July 27.

From the article: Read More

The July/August issue of the CEA's Vision magazine reveals some interesting details about the gaming industry including a $16.51 billion rise in shipment revenue this year.

The interactive magazine (accessible via the CEA website) also discusses gamer/consumer trends such as gamers buying into 'franchise titles' such as Halo and Mario Kart, the rise in accessory purchases for our consoles and digital delivery of video games through websites like Steam.

You can access the above information via the CEA website here.

Via CEA

There is an interesting editorial over at Brand X Daily by industry veteran Leigh Alexander that examines the evolution of the games industry and the resulting changes in the industry's largest game event, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, coming next week in Los Angeles.

After struggling to find its way over the last few years, E3 was a success again last year after finding the right balance of glitz versus important new information. Unfortunately it took several key companies boycotting the ent to get the ESA to push harder to find the proper middle ground for the show.

Alexander notes that the maturity of the industry forced some of the changes in the show and after last year's success, the 2010 show looks to be as fun as the previous year, without the boys' club atmosphere of its early years.

Syria is a country of approximately 22.0 million people, but it’s not often thought of as a center of game development.

While the country’s origins in game development are only about a dozen years old, the country has produced its fair share of videogames, the history of which are detailed in an article on GamesLatest, penned by Syrian game developer Radwan Kasmiya.

Kasmiya pins the delay in Syrian game development taking off on “serious” Arab developers generally gravitating towards creating corporate applications in order to make ends meet. This situation, in turn, helped to foster Syria’s independent gaming community, of which Kasmiya was a member—he released a game called War 73 in 1999, which centered on the Arab-Israeli conflicts.

(Story courtesy of GamePolitics. Image is concept art from the game UnderAsh)

Voice work in video games is coming under more and more scrutiny. As games become more involved and deeper productions, the role of the voice actor plays an increasing role. To that end, we contacted Mark Estdale, a casting director and founder of Outsource Media in the United Kingdom. He has worked on games since the early '90s and pulls no punches about his frustration with existing practices in the industry. He set up Outsource Media in 1996 to bring the audio craft in film and TV production to games. He has worked on such games Need for Speed III, Pac-Man World 3, Wipeout (Fusion, Pure and Pulse), Timesplitters 2, TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, Pro Evo Soccer, Wallace and Gromit's Grand Adventures, and many more. As you can see from his answers in this interview, he still beats a production values drum:

GameCulture: What is the general process a video game company goes through to get voice actors involved in its project?

Mark Estdale: I'm a casting and voice director, I also provide character and dialogue development support to developers and publishers, as well as coaching professional actors for working with games. Although I started off as an actor myself and occasionally get in front of a mic, my main roles are directing, casting and coordinating voice production.

It is common (and bad) practice to seek voice actors late in the development process when the script is almost finished when "getting the voices in" is high on the agenda. The process: get game working, rewrite voice script to match final gameplay, cast actors, record actors, get voice assets in game and get it mastered before the deadline.

A high percentage of my time is spent talking with dev teams and publishers regarding best practice as this common practice, deemed expedient, doesn't lead to good results. Read More

With the weak economy still holding a vice-like grip on business, many companies are looking for new revenue streams to help keep the bottom line in the black. Book publisher Random House is expanding into games.

According to a story in The Wall Street Journal, Random House wants to use its storytelling expertise in the videogame field. The publishers wants to tap into its stable of authors to start creating game storylines. One deal is already in place to work with Stardock on its upcioming strategy game Elemental: War of Magic.

From the story:

"There is increasing emphasis on storytelling in the videogame business, on building new worlds from the ground up," said Keith Clayton, Random House's director of creative development, who is heading the unit with Mikita Labanok, director of business development.

Around 15 employees are involved in the new venture. Several, including Mr. Clayton, have been involved in adapting videogames into books, and were responsible for building the "Star Wars" book franchise in partnership with Lucasfilm Ltd.

Stardock has welcomed the input from Random House:

"Poor dialogue ruins the experience." said Brad Wardell, Stardock's chief executive, who added that amateurish writing is one of the most common complaints in gaming.

I've always been a fan of good stories in videogames, so I'm all for this if it means I get more substance with my game play.

(Image, from the Wall Street Journal article, shows an illustration from a propsed Random House adventure game)

Nielsen has issued results of a study into the entertainment spending habits of U.S. consumers and the amount spent on videogames may come as a bit of a surprise.

The company queried over 3,000 consumers in all for their check on spending habits and found that 4.9% of all household funds allocated for entertainment were spent on videogame content. Nielsen defines videogame content as new and used games, downloadable content, rentals and peripherals. Videogame content had the sixth highest percentage, trailing activities (dining out etc…), TV packages, hobbies, live events, out of home movies and cell-phone related entertainment. The latter category garnered 5.3 percent.

Among households deemed “active buyers” in the videogame category, the monthly percentage of dollars spent on videogame content almost doubled, to 9.3 percent. Entrants in this category also spent less on magazines, books and newspapers (3.4 percent to 4.2 percent of the full group), but were more likely to buy or rent movies, purchase music and—perhaps surprisingly—to participate in sports activities.

Dollars spent on sporting activities among the “active buyer” of videogames segment was 4.1 percent, versus 3.1 percent from the whole group. The  category comprised 24.0 percent of all U.S. households.

Nielsen is prepping a full report on gaming, dubbed Nielsen 360° Gaming Report: United States Market, which will be released in March.

(Shared from our ECA sister site, GamePolitics)

You just plunked down $60 for game, grumbling at the cost of maintaining your hobby, especially when you plunk $60 down at a regular rate to keep playing. Did you ever wonder where that $60 goes?

An interesting graphic from the LA Times, courtesy of Steve Perlman of Onlive, breaks it down for us:

Another way to look at it is to say publishers such as Activision and Electronic Arts receive $45 after retailers take a $15 cut. Publishers turn around and pay a $7 licensing fee to console manufacturers such as Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. The cost of making, packaging and shipping game discs to stores carves up another $4. Finally, not all games sell, so the expense of returning unsold inventory eats up another $7.

That leaves publishers with about $27 per disc sold for development, marketing and other expenses. These are, of course, back-of-the-envelope averages. Each of these numbers can vary. For instance, a publisher could negotiate a smaller licensing fee with console manufacturers. And by deploying the Goldilocks method of inventory (not too much, not too little), they can also minimize returns. Tinkering with the margins in these ways lets companies tune their bottom lines.

Can I just send the publisher $27 and be done with it?

The life of a startup in the video game industry can be full of many potholes and pitfalls. There will be mistakes and second-guessing. But through it all, the hope is that the effort will bring success and a return on investment for the owners trying to build a dream.

In the case of Curt Schilling, former Red Sox starting pitcher, the road for his gaming startup 38 Studios has had its share of ups and downs. Schilling funded the studio himself and so far has been unable to entice other investors into his company, despite having some prominent members of a development team creating a massively multiplayer online game codenamed Copernicus, and purchasing startegy gaming studio Big Huge Games from THQ last year.

Schilling and 38 Studios are part of a recently published case study by Harvard Business School professor Noam Wasserman, who teaches the class Founders' Dilemmas at the school. The study reveals many of the issues that Schilling has faced since 38 Studios was founded in 2006, according to an article on Boston.com.

Some points from the study: Read More

It became a punchline for the decade: Where's Duke Nukem Forever? The "game" won so many vaporware awards that it became old the third time. But why did 3D Realms ever let it get to that point and how did the game that seemed to have such promise finally spell the demise for its prominent developer?

Wired Magazine took an in-depth look at 3D Realms and their franchise face to find out what went wrong. Co-founders George Broussard and Scott Miller refused to talk for the story because of a pending lawsuit against 3D Realms for failure to deliver the game. But Wired was able to piece together on-the-record and anonymous chats with former employees to get a pretty detailed look at the game and the inner workings of the company, and a virtual timeline leading up to the implosion.

From the article:

Ironically, the end was within reach, even if Broussard couldn’t see it. Raphael van Lierop, who was hired in 2007 as a creative director, was given several pieces of the game to play. It took him about five hours. Broussard was stunned; he’d thought those levels would take half that time to get through. “You could see the gears turning, with him thinking, ‘Oh wow — maybe we’ve got more game than we think,’” says van Lierop. Broussard had been staring at the game for so long, he’d lost perspective.

Van Lierop was excited: From what he’d seen of it, Duke Nukem Forever was so well developed — and so graphically superior to any other game in production — that if 3D Realms pushed hard for a year, they could release it and “blow everyone out of the water.” No, no, Broussard replied. It was two years out. Van Lierop was stunned. “I thought, ‘Wow, how many times have you been here, near the finish line, and you thought you were way out?’”

The story is incredibly well researched and offers a better picture of what happened. The ending offers some speculation on the future of the franchise:

Many observers think Take-Two is attempting to bleed 3D Realms dry until it has no more cash, then convince a judge to force Broussard and Miller to hand over intellectual-property rights to the Duke Nukem franchise to repay the $2.5 million advance. “It’s an IP grab,” says one Dallas-area developer. If Take-Two actually secured the rights to Duke Nukem, it might likely throw out the by-then-aging Duke Nukem Forever and simply hire new developers to produce new Duke games. But even without the suit, there is only a short window for Duke Nukem Forever to come out in its current form before it will have to be revised yet again, to keep pace with changing technology.

With Take-Two facing many of its own financial woes, the conclusion may not be far-fetched.

(Image courtesy Wired Magazine and Olly Moss)