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Running head: SUGGESTION FOR NEW GAME

Analysis of the Game Industry and a Suggesting for a New Game

4/20/18
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Running head: SUGGESTION FOR NEW GAME

Introduction

This report aims to analyze the gaming industry and to provide a supportive suggestion

for a new game. Different factors were taken into consideration after examining the relevant

industries, target markets, price points as well as the public market. Based on the findings of the

analysis, the report concludes that a free to play first person shooter warfare game is the best

option for the project.

Game Type

There are multiple types of games, including role-playing, action shooter, adventure,

sports games, and strategy based games. However, data by Statista, which provides a breakdown

of video games by sales in the United States, indicates that the first person shooter and action

genres as the most popular and common video games. The table below shows the popularity of

each genre based on the distribution of US video game sales as of June 2016 (Statista, 2016).
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Running head: SUGGESTION FOR NEW GAME

Table 1: Breakdown of video game distribution in the US

From the data provided Statista.com, it is evident that the shooter genre is the most

purchased, which shows that the shooter genre is the most preferred and this project would

therefore perform well if it adopts a genre that many players are familiar with and are willing to

play most of the time. In general, a shooter game would be the most suitable choice for this

project compared to other genres.

Target Market

The global video game market is expected to increase to grow at a CARG of 6.6 percent

by the year 2019 (De Prato, Feijóo and Simon, 2014). On the other hand, physical formats are

increasingly being replaced by digital formats where users can simply access content online.

Among the major benefits of this trend is that users are able to receive regular updates and new
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Running head: SUGGESTION FOR NEW GAME

content in addition to cheaper prices, and the ability to play online with friends (Grannan,

Suryanarayana, and Patron, 2017). Taking the above factors into consideration it is essential that

the new game should adopt a similar trend that will enable users to have easy access without

having to download the game or buy physical media.

Pricing

Video games are normally either pay to play or free to play (Deterding et al., 2011). The

pay option requires that users either purchase a lifetime license or pay a subscription fee while

the free to play can be supported by online advertising on the game’s website (Alha et al., 2014).

Due to the large of games, most of which are high quality ad-free to play, it will be beneficial for

this game to adopt a freemium model. The causal gamers can access the basic functionality and

enjoy the free features while more enthusiastic players can have the option to pay for extra

features and have a better experience (Hamari et al., 2017). One of the biggest advantages of this

model is that more players will be attracted to play the game due to the limited cost of access,

which in turn will increase our advertising revenues, while we continue to earn more revenue

from new and existing hardcore gamers (Dergousoff and Mandryk, 2015).

Conclusion

According to the findings of this report, an online-based shooter game would be the most

appropriate model for this project based on game type, target market as well as price point and

public interests. This is due to the popularity of shooter games which when combined with a

better pricing model, good graphics and open world to explore will provide users with a unique

and memorable experience to keep them coming back for more.

References
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Running head: SUGGESTION FOR NEW GAME

Alha, K., Koskinen, E., Paavilainen, J., Hamari, J., & Kinnunen, J. (2014). Free-to-play games:

Professionals’ perspectives. Proceedings of nordic DiGRA, 2014.

De Prato, G., Feijóo, C., & Simon, J. P. (2014). Innovations in the video game industry:

Changing global markets. Communications & strategies, (94), 17.

Dergousoff, K., & Mandryk, R. L. (2015, April). Mobile gamification for crowdsourcing data

collection: Leveraging the freemium model. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM

Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1065-1074). ACM.

Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., & Nacke, L. (2011, September). From game design

elements to gamefulness: defining gamification. In Proceedings of the 15th international

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ACM.

Grannan, M., Suryanarayana, L., & Patron, D. (2017). U.S. Patent No. 9,838,461. Washington,

DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Hamari, J., Alha, K., Järvelä, S., Kivikangas, J. M., Koivisto, J., & Paavilainen, J. (2017). Why

do players buy in-game content? An empirical study on concrete purchase

motivations. Computers in Human Behavior, 68, 538-546.

Statista. (2016). U.S. most popular video game genres 2016. Retrieved from

https://www.statista.com/statistics/189592/breakdown-of-us-video-game-sales-2009-by-

genre/
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References
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Retrieved from IBISWorld database.

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