"games" covers a lot of ground. Football is a game, poker is a game, farmville is a game, bunnies and burrows is a game (or it used to be), ...
Nowadays, there's a lot of money being made in "games as media" (World of Warcraft is an example). There's so much money changing hands here that more traditional media companies - music, television, movies - are seeing their profits cut (and this change in profits is often ascribed to online piracy). There are some really interesting economic lessons here. One of the most interesting issues, from my point of view, is the concept of a "sharing economy" or a "gift economy". We have always had advertising, and sales and profits have always depended on advertising. But nowadays intense economic competition is pushing more and more value into advertising. If you want to succeed you have to give away more and more for free (and you still need to pull back enough to eat, of course). Computers and the efficiencies they bring make this possible, and necessary. So, for example, we are seeing successful advertisers putting more effort into making their advertisements be entertaining. But it's even deeper than that - the free software movement can also be seen as advertising. Software professionals advertise their skills this way, companies advertise their services this way, etc. And, in the games markets, we are more and more seeing "free to play" games, where the game itself is a market place. [But most of them fail, by not offering many payment options. Adults in different countries don't even have the same currencies available to them, and the younger crowd will tend to not have established credit ratings. On the positive side, this makes it easier for their competition.] Meanwhile, different people have very different tastes, and ... we also tend to be a bit picky: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law It's a fascinating set of issues and problems, and while some of the implications are clear, some of them seem surprisingly non-obvious. Thanks, -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
