HA3 Task 1 Structure – The Value Chain

The Value Chain

 The Value chain is a reference to the sectors of the games industry that are essential to a game's development, thought process, manufacture and marketing. These job sectors are devised of 6 categories: 

• Developers
• Publishers
• Console Manufacturers/First Party Publishers
• Distribution and Retail
• Outsourcing Companies
• Press and Media

Developers

A Developer is job role that produces the computer code that allow certain features or events to happen within a game. This role is vital, as it gives a sense of life to the game, it makes the player actually have some form of interaction with the game. Characters are usually free to move around a world unless they are restricted on purpose a good example of important movement would be in the indie game "Wings of Vi" This game is a precision skill based plat former that changes movement mechanics through out the game by constantly evolving the level, although the fundamental movement is the same, it is very crucial for game play. The Developer doesn't just create movement, they also make spontaneous or key events happen, this can include cut scenes, AI for enemies or allies and Trigger events which all give the game play an even more life like perspective to the player. A Developer's job also entails fixing bugs, this is a very important stage of development as the game needs to function as it is intended, fixing bugs can include errors with code or in-game malfunctions such as player clipping or incorrect textures. For instance a popular video game bug was the "Missing no" Pokemon in the video game "Pokemon red & blue", This was actually found in more than 1 of the Pokemon games.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b7/Missingno.png

Publishers

A video game Publisher is a company that publishes a video game that has been developed by themselves or a game developer. An important role they have is financing the development by paying a game development team. Often times larger publisher's in the video game industry tend to help distribute the game they publish, meanwhile, smaller publishers hire distribution/advertisement companies too. They can also pay for the license of a game as well as localization and layout etc. An example of a large publishing company is "Activision" They published large selling games such as Transformers series, The entire Call of Duty series and Quake (besides the first game).

Console Manufacturers/First Party Publishers

First party video game publishers are a company that manufacturer and distribute video games consoles as well as allowing third party publishers to produce video games on it's platform for a legal agreement (licensing fee). Examples of these companies include Sony Computer Entertainment, Nintendo and Microsoft. An example of a console one of these companies have produced is the Xbox 360 by Microsoft. Although Microsoft still produce their own games, this console has a wide variety of  third party publishers that had manufactured video games for them. The console manufacturers try to use different strategies to sell their consoles instead of a buyer purchasing another console.

Distribution and Retail

The distribution of video games is often done by companies such as steam, origin etc. Although games can also be distributed by companies such as activision who pay for advertisements, marketing etc. For independent game developers, they would be required to seek and pay a company to do it for them. But why is it so popular to distribute video games? Well if nobody distributed video games, we wouldn't see them advertised or marketed which would lead too no sales of the game at all, simply because nobody knows about it.