Game industry moving towards GaaS

The move from traditional game industry business models to Games-as-a-Service (GaaS) has already happened. To increase time spend gaming, top companies are accelerating the development of Open World Game.

John Hermanowski, a world-class game designer, suggests five tips to make the games that offer a better experience to the player.

Sirada Jensen, Senior Level Designer of Ubisoft Toronto — one of the world’s leading game studios — the cinematic designer of Far Cry Primal reveals that game industry is transforming itself into the game as a service (GaaS) model. Players can keep playing at any time and can play with more people. There will also be a lot of marketing tactics to creating longterm engagement with the player. Instead of just the primary campaign, some games tournament will be held periodically to encourage people to keep playing.

This new business model, game companies will create games to boost the number of players. Other primary goals are to increase the airtime or time spent, that does not allow players to try the other games.

“Game companies are beginning to focus on “less IP” by reducing their focus on new game titles,  but they are trying to extend the ecosystem of each game for longer engagement, which supports the growth of revenue, such as items selling and other services to follow,” said Ms. Sirada.

Also, the Open World trend is growing, especially the games that have the potential to play online. Open World game is a free-to-play game that has the vast game area, varies activities or short missions about 10-15 minutes for players to choose. And when doing any quest, Open World game players will return the item, that’s for pulling players to keep playing with long-term engagement.

Newzoo, a global gaming market research company, revealed the 2018 gaming market trend. It reported that free-to-play games on the console are rising. The free-to-play games era is a milestone in the success of the mobile and PC gaming market as many gaming companies are gear towards this direction.

John Hermanowski, Art Director of Bigbox VR who is one of the characters creatives in the Final Fantasy VII movie version, said to envision imaginative and creative work in the digital industry, everyone who interested in the digital arts should learn the basics of traditional art.

He said about five techniques for new game designers: 1) Reference Everything: Using the prototype or photo from the referenced artists to make them more comfortable and better composition of the picture. 2) Paintover: Adjust the finished work by avoiding to dismantle the details of the concept. 3) Scale: Focusing on the proportion is the crucial thing to create a dynamic art movement. 4) Teamwork: Gaming is a universal industry. A game designer has to work with people from different countries. Working as teamwork will help team learning from each other. 5) The power of the sketch: Drawing sketches throughout the process of creating the work helps to run all operation faster. The challenge is maintaining customer satisfaction on the original idea.

A survey from Newzoo also figures that Q1 2018, the global gaming market is worth $137 billion. There are 2.3 billion gamers worldwide. Even mobile phones have plagued the gaming space, but playing games on consoles and PCs are continued to grow. Especially playing games on the PC is supported by the competitive tournament and e-Sport.

Sirada Jensen, Senior Level Designer of Ubisoft Toronto