Video Game Industry - The History Of The Video Game Industry

Video game industry is one of the most upcoming industries nowadays. Speaking precisely it is the economic sector involved with the development, marketing and sale of video game. Formally known as interactive entertainment industry, it provides entertainment to a large number of people and also provides a variety of job opportunities in various disciplines. Now it is supposed to the largest industry that has greater sales even more than the sales of Hollywood.

History

William Higinbotham can be regarded as the father of video games. He created the first recorded video game only. The game Tennis For Two was on an experimental basis and was never commercially released. This laid down the platform, which gradually formed into a hobby culture. With the growth of availability of personal computers the industry has grown manifolds. The industry also advanced with the advancement in the computing technology. The video game industry has a momentum of its own and profit from this industry still drives the technology which is further used by other industries. The video game industry is very volatile and as there are a lot of third party game developers cropping up and getting out of business very quickly, the industry has grown matured still remaining volatile.

Video games like any other industry also has certain practice that characterizes other entertainment industries also. However lately there has been a lot of hue and cry that the video game industry is underestimating the developing talents and is poorly treating them. This has led to the development of independent developers because of which the video game industry has not gained any definite shape. However the practices followed within the industry are: -

1. Breakaways One of the major practices that are being followed in the video game industry is the custom of breakaways. As the video game industry doesn't pay any attention to the budding game developers and treat them very badly so there are a large number of breakaways in this industry. One of the brightest examples in this regard is the independent video game developer Activision.
2. Economic problems There are a lot of economic problems in this industry as there are a lot of publisher and developer problems. The problem is regarding the royalties. Actually a particular amount of the royalty should go to the developer and the rest should go to the publisher. But the trend is that the publishers but the development studio itself so there is no option of dividing the royalty itself.

Apart from these practices there are some other practices such as the problem regarding the creative control of the video games. However the industry has managed to survive and flourish along with these.