Industry Review of 2009

Overall, even if it’s proving to be a difficult financial year, games are at least expanding massively in their nature and remit while we also gain a deeper understanding of what they are. Even when industries suffer, the cultures behind them can continue to thrive.

Frank Lantz’ microtalk at GDC was one of our favorite things all year, where he stated “games are not media”, and that they in fact have a heritage of play going back thousands of years. He iterates a bit more on these ideas in this interview by Michael Samyn.

We kept seeing bits of very interesting game design too, from Stephen Lavelle’s Happening Game , designed to be played at large events, to Harry Lee’s idea for Sneaky Cards. Designers seem to be getting a much better grip of game mechanics in separation from platforms, and by doing so are building a better heritage for future games.

During the year, while listening to people pitching ARGs, we also figured out that ARG developers seem to take a mostly narrative approach, which in some ways bypasses a lot of game mechanics. I think there’s a lot more to be done in this area , and found out by talking about it with Minkette that in fact, many designers of cross platform games are currently distancing themselves from the term ARG as it was too restrictively defined at its inception to describe the things people now make. There are going to be some interesting and bizarre games in the next few years, but they probably won’t be called ARGs.

The architecture and games panel at Develop was also a major highlight of the year for us, with intelligent discussion moving all the way from level design to locative games and urban design. The overall impression I got from the panel was that we don’t yet have an anywhere near complete grammar or lexicon of game development, but by comparing notes with other disciplines, we are getting palpably closer.

Some comparisons have been run into the ground, for instance film, but this panel underlined to me that there are others, such as architecture, which could prove to be gold mines. Of course, none of these disciplines will come to completely define games, as some of their proponents rather patronisingly seem to think, but there are plenty of things game designers can usefully borrow from.

All of the expansion in games is not without its seamier side, as was shown by the widely covered scandal over offer scams in Zynga’s Facebook games. Ultimately, Facebook started disciplining them and forced Zynga to take them down, but we think it will by no means be the last time something this exploitative happens with social games.

Cultural understanding of games has also expanded greatly, with some more sophisticated forms of advocacy appearing, such as Common Sense Media’s article on ten blockbuster games, why they’re not suitable for kids, and an age appropriate alternative to each of them . It’s certainly mature and very welcome progression from just pointing to the fact that games have age ratings.

Of course, amidst all of the trends, fashions and goldrushes that are accompanying the expansion of games, we mustn’t ever forget or neglect the disciplined, highly trained and educated core of people who produce them. This Gamasutra piece on dirty coding tricks is the best and funniest reminder of that we had in all of 2009.

Update by David Hayward.