An Insiders Look at the Video Game Industry
The video game industry is going through some monumental changes and I thought I’d shed some light on them from the inside. With that said, I decided to whip up a presentation that looks at many of the different areas of the industry including many of the trends that are occuring.
The presentation is geared towards the following:
- If you work at a media co. looking to acquire in this sector
- If you work at an ad agency or brand trying to make sense of the video game space
- If you’re a game publisher and looking to expand your product line and features
- If you’re a game publisher trying to make sense of the macro industry trends
- If you’re an investor, trying to figure out which are of the industry is hot
Please note that I purposely left out IGA Worldwide, a company that I co-founded a few years back. The reason why I left the company out of the presentation is that some readers would think that I made the presentation solely to hype the company. I tried to be as company-agnostic as possible, to give readers a non-biased view on the games industry.
I welcome all commentary and criticism. Please leave a comment on the blog or shoot me an email. I promise to respond to each comment individually.
I think we’re in an extremely exciting time with Halo 3 bringing in $170M on the first day, Areae launching Metaplace, and Habbo & Tencent proving out the virtual goods model. Who said games aren’t fun? 
The presentation is below, and hosted on slideshare (if you’d like to view it there):
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Category: In-Game Advertising, Internet & Web X.0, Media & Entertainment, RMT/Virtual Goods, Technology, Video Games, Virtual World / Metaverse
Tags: business, developer, game publisher, iga worldwide, MA, marketing, trends, video game, virtual goods, www
October 1st, 2007 at 7:29 am
[...] devilsworkshop wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptIf you work at a media co. looking to acquire in this sector; If you work at an ad agency or brand trying to make sense of the video game space; If you’re a game publisher and looking to expand your product line and features … [...]
October 1st, 2007 at 9:53 am
Interesting information - Halo 3 has definitely broken records.
October 2nd, 2007 at 9:21 am
Great insight, Darren!
Interesting look at the future.
October 2nd, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Darren, do you think the cellphone-based games have been lagging behind console / handheld / Internet games, especially in the USA? Cellphone gaming has huge potential, but the business models and technology are not advancing at the same rate as console and Internet gaming.
October 5th, 2007 at 8:28 am
[...] a flat-monthly fee. It’s a weird parallel to draw, but look at the video game industry. The lifetime value of a gamer is a lot more than just the initial cost of the [...]
October 31st, 2007 at 2:11 pm
[...] Here is a good inside look at what’s happening in the game industry from my friend Darren Herm…. [...]
November 8th, 2007 at 10:04 am
[...] on this. I tried to talk about the macro-trends in the video game industry, some of which I posted in early October on this [...]
January 8th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
[...] the platform (device) layer in the middle, and the technical (developer) layer at the bottom “An Insiders Look at the Video Game Industry,” Darren [...]
June 4th, 2008 at 7:57 am
[...] spoken quite a bit about how game publishers have to find alternative revenue sources and in-game ads is certainly a [...]