Playing Is Not Just for Kids Anymore

The Fututuba trendsblog is writing about the main drivers and challenges in it's recent article about gaming industry. We bring you an English summary of that article.

The main drivers of change in the gaming industry are new business models, consumer behaviour and technology advances. 

New business models most often mean cutting out the middlemen like distributors and retailers from the value chain in short-cutting the path to the customers via new digital distribution means.

That is supported by the consumers’ behaviour which favours availability of lightweight games on a multitude of platforms (including mobile). 

As far as the technological progress is concerned, four trends can be seen:

• Continued Evolution of Digital Distribution,
  
• Serious games,
  
• User Generated Content, and
  
• Innovation in Technologies.
  

While taking advantage of these opening opportunities, one will have to consider several challenges on that new playground:

• Rising Costs of Development,
  
• Fragmentation of Platforms,
  
• Information Security and Privacy,
  
• Copyright, and
  
• Mobile Network Capacity.
  

Although the leading countries in digital game development like the US, the UK, also Finland, have been at it for decades, Estonia still has a few ad hoc successes to show. 

For example, the founders of Skype met at a game developing company Bluemoon Interactive and came up with P2P technology there, and the rest, as they say, is history. 

From more recent time Creative Mobile has been entertaining the tens of millions of mobile users with their “Drag Racing” games. 

These examples hopefully pave way for more systemic approach as witnessed by a creative cluster initiative Play Estonia, and more recently by the first European gaming start-up accelerator launched in Estonia called GameFounders. 

These are but the very first steps in an area where opportunities are growing.

Many companies seek local (ie graduates) and foreign (as it relates to immigration policy) talent to satisfy their need for international management and marketing experience as well as many specific technical skills (like UI or VFX). 

The situation is pretty similar in leading gaming industries as this topic has been of great interest and concern to the British NESTA (in reports „Playing the Game“ and „Next Gen.“) and Irish Forfás („The Games Sector in Ireland: An Action plan for Growth“).

These insights inspired that story in Fututuba.ee by Kristjan Rebane which in full version (in Estonian) goes into much greater detail about the aforementioned trends and opportunities emerging from the growth of the digital gaming.

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