Hello! You might not remember little 'ol me, but I'm a long-time member, second-or-third-time poster. Today, I'm here to talk about a little something I like to call "The Cycle of Gaming" and, specifically, how the surge of "micro-gaming" companies fit into it. This might not be your cup of tea, but bear with me, gentlewomen. Bear with me.
Let's begin with the dawn of gaming -- the Pong age. Back then, everyone and their mother's company were producing some variation on the Pong console. Atari did it. GE did it. Even Nintendo got into the game -- but only in Japan. The field was wide open and people didn't really know what the limits of the technology of gaming were. At the time, all you could do was some variation on the classic "two bars and a square". Since it was a virtually newborn market with the possibility for large technological advances, companies jumped on the bandwagon of video gaming and began mass-producing what was basically the same product -- with some extras or strange controllers aside. The world of gaming expanded and exploded.
Then came the big granddaddy of them all -- the Atari 2600, which tried to compete with the arcade games for quality and market share. Of course, there were other competitors, but none made such an impact as Atari did in the early 80s. Companies soon realized that they either a) didn't want to put time, effort, and money into competing with Atari, or b) would go bankrupt trying to do so. Thus, the world of gaming narrowed -- with the exception of a few choice competitors.
This doesn't mean that there was no OTHER game capable devices around. The early computers of the day -- however primitive by our standards -- could handle basic games, and some later computers could even match the Atari 2600 with quality. These were far and few between, as computer-based gaming was a small and niche market in the mostly business-based market of the day. There were even competing CONSOLES -- including the Colecovision, the Odyssey, the Intellivision, and the Fairchild. These were but insects before the mighty God that was Atari.
Atari ruled as a king, gorging itself on the hundreds of third-party developers that prostrated themselves in front of the joystick god. Everything was made into a video game -- movies, books, television shows. But the salad days could not last forever. Some of you may be familiar with the year 1983 and its effects on the world of gaming. Some of you might even know the fabled, horrific, Lovecraftian games that are blamed for causing such an event. I dare not speak their names, but let's just say that they begin with "E" and "P", and ends with "T the Extraterrestrial" and "ac Man". However, it was more of an overflow in the market that led to this fabled dark day. And that's what I'm going to talk about today -- saturation of the market by small, "indie" game companies.
Let's walk and talk, you and I. Most of you -- I assume -- have an Apple device or something similar -- such as an Android or Windows phone. You like them, right? They play little tinny tunes in your ear, remind you to walk the dog, or keep all of those handy-dandy emails from Nigerian princes with you always. Now, most of you have -- again, assuming -- have used these nifty little hunks of plastic to buy something called an "app".
I'm not going to explain what an app is to you, as I am sure that a community of such lovely ladies is well versed in the language of technology. However, let's talk -- or you'll just sit there and read -- about the effect these wonderful bits of coding have brought to us, hmm? It's not hard to get a license to produce games on an Apple, Android, or Windows product -- just pay a chunk of change and get the rights to their code. Then, the sky's the limit within the guidelines set forth by the big guys in charge. Any number of businesses and individuals can do this with the right amount of money and know-how. Thus, a tidal wave of various apps have flooded the market.
Now, what's the point you say? Why should you, the consumer, care about a glut of apps and widgets available for X dollars and ninety-nine cents? Well, to put it simply, the overflow of apps will lead to competition among similar apps. It already has. Look at any successful games available for mobile devices -- Fruit Ninja, Farmville, Angry Birds, etc. -- and look at the similar games available both before and after their release. After the success of Farmville -- for example --, there was an EXPLOSION of management/building games using the same "free for play, pay for extras" model. Now, this doesn't mean that EVERY game in this style is ripping off Farmville or any other popular app, but individuals and companies looking to make money and sell their games are always on the look-out for what's popular in their target audience.
With such fierce competition and such large disparity between profit margins, the online market for downloadable content or what I like to call "micro-downloads" can draw attention from otherwise unaffiliated and uninterested organizations or industries. In the next few years, you might see other micro-downloads available from any number of places -- from purchasing certain features for your cable service, to whole browsers or their various options, to even purchasing small upgrades and gadgets for your operating system.
Essentially, the proliferation of a wide assortment of competing micro-downloads for mobile devices could lead to a more wide-spread proliferation of competing micro-downloads for everyday life.
Any thoughts, questions, jabs, or hate messages?
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