Vviewpoints

DOI: 10.1145/1666420.1666431

Economic and
business dimensions
Gaming Will save Us all

How gaming, as the first media market to successfully transition
toward media-as-a-service, is an exemplar for a similar evolutionary
transition of content and entertainment.

I oFtEn proCLaim atdigitalme- dia and gaming conferences that gaming ( 2.0) will save us all. By this, I don’t mean that we will spend our leisure hours reaching level 68 Dark Elf Druids in World of Warcraft. I mean that well-proven, hybrid revenue models from the cutting edge of Gaming 2.0 will revive traditional media industries, many of which have been disrupted by digital formats and irreversibly fragmented by the Internet.

Gaming 1.0 is the traditional pack-
aged-goods, retail-based model we are
all familiar with. Historically it will be
remembered as the domain of nerdy,
young males playing old-school down-
loadables and ad-based online prod-
ucts. The hits-based business model
of Gaming 1.0 was as unpredictable
as the hits themselves. Gaming start-
ups had difficulty scaling up to large,
standalone businesses. The success
of Electronic Arts and a few others
was overshadowed by countless busi-
ness failures. Gaming 1.0 companies
spent fortunes to make products that
might or might not make money. As
with the movie business, Gaming 1.0
companies increasingly bet the farm
on “tentpole” titles, often sequels of
prior successes. They did not invest in
newer and riskier products.