Games and Play as Business Models
The business of video games and journalism may have more in common than first meets the eye. After all, both industries are in flux. Games’ commerce hardly resembles what it was a decade ago. While journalism is having difficulty finding its place in the digital economy, the game industry has expanded and diversified, generating seventy-six billion dollars in revenue in 2013.44 Games have proliferated beyond the AAA titles made for consoles and are now accessible on smartphones, portable game systems, computers, and even emerging platforms like the Oculus Rift and smartwatch.
This section delves into some of the prominent business practices of the game industry to provoke a discussion of how the strategies game developers and publishers adopt—from freemium to philanthropic investment—might be of potential use to journalists. Considering this multiplicity of business models the gaming industry employs could be useful to media companies adjusting to online content distribution. In any case, the game industry has evolved and adapted in ways few industries have.