It has come to a moment where people always ask themselves, why do we play games?
Is it for the sake of fun? Or it is just something that takes us out of this dimension the believe what our world could be in our way.
Today I will be discussing 2 definitive premises,
– People play games to socialize
– People play games to achieve a higher prestige
Firstly,
PEOPLE PLAY GAMES TO SOCIALIZE
Nowadays people have a strong bond with traditional socializing methods such as having a dinner, meeting or event gatherings, but those times are a basic first hand experience of how people interact with each other.
Many industries nowadays have people who play games, Competitive or not, they all play games, and therefore it is a step up on socializing in this current generation.
A few example on how games are bringing people together are games such as
OVERWATCH
Overwatch is a Multiplayer online First Person Shooter game where it requires both skill and most importantly communicating skills from each personal on the team to achieve the best way to win every matches in the game.
This game has been on a very high leaderboard for the pass years and till now, people are still playing and watching it for both Competitive scene of the game and the fun of the game.
WORLD OF WARCRAFT
I will never forget this particular game when it comes to socializing games. World of Warcraft has been a staple for a lot of gamers around the world and you wouldn’t believe me if I would say this game brings a lot of people together.
World of Warcraft (WoW) is the most famous MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) that has ever surfaced on earth. Based on Statista, WoW will be expecting to remain at least a number of 5.5M players remain in their subscription for the game until the end of 2018. Many from the game industry found their friends playing WoW for a long time and this games brings their relationship even further.
A best example is this couple from the article where they met each other in this particular game and got together in real life. LINK HERE
BATTLE ROYALE GAMES (PUBG, Fortnite, etc … )
Battle Royale Games are the current hype for 2018, tons and tons of mobile user are up for PUBG Mobile (Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds Mobile) and this impacted the China Communities 10 times more than any other countries. With the initial success of the game on the PC, PUBG mobile has a larger fan base and even competition up to 600k USD for grabs. People in China even have cases where they hunt down cheaters in their local cybercafe .
Even the branching company “Tencent” has release a firm to fight against Cheaters arresting not less than 120 people has been caught. LINK HERE
With all of these games being in the market to be grabbed, people formed multiple communities around it such as gaming groups, modding groups and so on. Even companies (especially game related companies) requires people to have experience in particular games as a requirement.
Games connect people unbelievably closer than a lot of social interaction, it might be a starter for a lot of people just because they played with each other within a match.
Secondly,
People play games to achieve a higher prestige
Many people like me, likes playing games but that is not only the fun part, we love dominating the game more than any other things, and this is where Esports started.
Esports Officially started with a BANGING 10k participant to join a Space Invader Competition. This has marked a significant start for something fresh and when travelling was not a convenient thing back then.
You can read more about the history of Esports here.
Esports grew significantly at the start of 2011 when Dota 2 had their first Ofiicial tournament called “The International”, it was the first ever game that had over 1 MILLION dollars for grabs and this shocked every industry.
Esports by then never stop growing, competition grew larger and larger attracting to millions of people joining this Competitive Gaming Industry.
If you have read my Career Plan and my Intro, you should know I myself have a lot of involvement within this industry as well. Personally as an aspiring business interpreter, I have to acknowledge the impact of Esports towards the marketing industries.
Here’s an article to read up based on the how much people in the industry think of marketing impact by the Esport industry. LINK HERE LINK 2
As a Conclusion, People play games not to only have fun but to reach a higher level and get close to each other in the simplest form of having fun.
So, how does this impacts the Business Cycle?
People in the Esport Industry plays games that are mostly online, so I will be mentioning the trends of the current generation :
- Battle Royale games
- MOBA
- FPS
These few game genres are huge and brings impact towards the game industry. It is still true that Single Player games are still successful and healthy to build but lets be honest here, we all know that a multiplayer game has a very vast reach potential and could also potentially give a lot of income towards future projects.
There are 2 common traits that falls under the line of current hype games:
- They let players to connect with each other
- They let players to have slight difference in each games that they play
Based on this article, there are 6 elements that makes a good multiplayer game
- Emphasis on Teamwork
- Different Modes
- Easy to learn, Fun to Master
- Progression System with Unlockables
- Downloadable Content (DLC)
- Offline Options
With these elements, I could not think of a better example than Monster Hunter : World (MHW). This game have achieve most of the elements above and still bringing in contents continuously after their release. Although there are only a small competitive scene that approaches MHW such as speedruns and time breaker, I personally would consider this game to be one of the best games out there for everyone. The games have a few features that are worth the be mentioned such as :
- Easy to learn weapons and monster patterns
- Interesting Storyline and in game culture
- offline capability
- Mod friendly (as for now, since Capcom has yet to release any news regarding this)
- Solo and Multiplayer Difficulty adjustment
What can I contribute to the Game Development in my future
I have experience dealing with sponsorship and marketing agents in my experience with a competitive team involvement as a player and manager, so I am confident that coming up with new marketing strategies that helps to promote and sell games more efficient is what I am capable of doing especially when it comes to a multiplayer game. This requires my skill of able to grab the core pointers of the game and spread it towards the community.
Other than that I am also capable of designing levels with tools like Stencyl or Minecraft. I have yet to be good in Unity but I am able to understand the basics of the codes. Mockups of game level design are also one of the things I could do and had been a practice since my study of Game Genre Studies 2 semester back.
These are the current skills that I had practiced and I hope to learn even more towards development tools in the future.
That’s all I have for now and I hope you tune in to the next post, PEACE!
Extra Read-ups:
https://gamerant.com/rise-of-online-multiplayer-games-couch-coop/
https://www.higheredgeek.com/blog/here-is-why-gaming-is-great-for-socializing
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-awesome-social-networks-just-for-gamers/
Zebuft 