Welcome to “The Big 5”, a weekly feature for this course featuring five recent news stories important to the game industry. These can be around emerging trends, important happenings, topics of interest, or sometimes just unusual and noteworthy items. Following the industry news is an important step towards understanding not just how games are made, but why developers and publishers make the decisions that they do.
This semester we will be especially focused on the following areas of interest to the industry:
- Next Gen Consoles: This year both Sony and Microsoft are expected to announce and release their Gen 5 platforms. We will discuss what to expect, when to expect it, and what the specifications mean, as they are released.
- Streaming / Subscription Games: New technologies and products like Google Stadia and Apple Arcade are entering the fray in an attempt to gain market share and disrupt the current status quo of game economics. How successful will they be?
- Extended Reality (VR/AR/MR/XR): Spatial computing technologies are finally enjoying a modest degree of commercial success, with millions of VR headsets sold and the promise of wearable AR looming on the horizon. Who are the leaders and what can current trends tell us about where this field will go?
- E-Sports: Gaming leagues continue to establish and emerge at a rapid pace, as the sporting world (and gambling world) all try to wrap their heads around this space. Where is this growing, and how do we see game companies responding to or pursuing these opportunities?
- The Business of Game Development: Layoffs, closures, acquisitions, and lawsuits happen. We will dive into the business of games and what these stories mean in a broader context.
- Social Impact of Games: We will look at how games impact our society (and how society impacts our game experience).
Details of these news stories will be discussed in class, but links will be posted here on the website for you to follow along and dig deeper into these events.