Musing of the Week: A quiet start to 2021 is nothing to be worried about, for now….

In GDC’s State of the Industry survey, about a third of developers had said working from home impacted development schedules. From a consumer point of view, it is difficult to quantify how much impact Covid-19 has had on game production. We know for sure the pandemic has had a huge positive impact on demand (see news below) but on the supply side, whether this extended “quiet” period in the first four months of 2021 is due to Covid-19, or if it was going to happen anyway, is debatable.

Did you get a physical game in a box for Christmas? Or better still, a new console? When it came to the new consoles you had two choices with either system: do you opt for the cheaper disc-less version, or the more expensive one that comes with an optical drive?

At the time of writing this blog (October 2020) all eyes are on the new consoles coming from Sony and Microsoft. Right now, there is a wave of heightened anticipation and excitement as we enter a new console generation, but something else just as seismic has been happening to the game industry for some time now. China has eyes on console gaming.

It is on the minds of every industry, every company, every government, and everyone in work. How bad will the recession of 2020 – 2021 be? When it comes to the console and PC video game market, this question is no less relevant.

The Unreal Engine 5 demonstration looked fantastic. There I said it.

Epic unveiled the new iteration of their Unreal Engine with a promotional video on the 13 May 2020. I highly recommend everyone to check out the Unreal Engine 5 demonstration video on YouTube, preferably on the highest settings your TV or monitor can handle. The new engine uses the latest technology in video rendering. As a layman who knows next to nothing about game development, when terminology like “Nanite virtualized micropolygon technology”, “Lumen” and “convulsion reverb” were mentioned, I was lost, but that is not important. All I know is what my eyes and ears were telling me. They were telling me – this looks and sounds stunning!

Out of nowhere, the coronavirus, Covid-19, turned the world upside down. Almost all the people in the world and almost all industries have been affected by the virus, the video game industry even more so. One only must read the Games Sales Data (GSD), produced by B2Boost, for the EMEA region to get an idea of the ferocity of change since the time Europe went into lockdown.

In 2003 I fell in love with a green lipped brunette called Jade. She is the heroine from the Ubisoft’s game, Beyond Good & Evil. Although the game was not a commercial success, it did get a cult following and received solid reviews with mostly 8/10 from critics. What made the game special for me was the fact Jade used her intelligence to figure out a way to defeat the bad guys and her weapon of choice was a camera (she did come armed with a combat staff that she used for defence…. obviously!).  Ubisoft will release a sequel to Beyond Good & Evil and the reason could largely be because Jade is such a unique, memorable character that gamers find appealing.

Making predictions about the video game industry has historically been paved with false optimism or, conversely, not enough imagination. Publishers and developers never fail to surprise gamers with new gameplay mechanics or announcements of games that few people saw coming. So, with that in mind, this blog is not one that will make predictions about 2020. However, given what we know has been announced for 2020 so far and what we can safely expect this year, I would hazard a guess that 2020 could be a great year in video game history.

At the time of writing this blog (late November 2019) there have been 2 major announcements regarding Virtual Reality (VR) gaming, each monumental in its implication. One was great for VR, the other was not.

Owning games is becoming a hot topic. There has been a landmark case in France that has brought into focus the question of who owns a digitally bought game. The issue is that when you buy a digital video game what exactly are you buying?