The serious business of fun
A bit of the entertainment business that many other firms can learn from
All the world’s a game
Video games will be the fastest-growing and most exciting form of mass media over the coming decade
As you like it
There is a video game for every taste
Thinking out of the box
Consoles are no longer the only game in town
Paying for pixels
Virtual goods are worth real money–and cause real dilemmas
Gentlemen, start your computers
Sport by other means
No killer app
The moral panic about video games is subsiding
The play’s the thing
What video-game technology can do in the real world
Home ludens
Why video games will be an enduring success
‘We believed in the existence in this country of a vast reading public for intelligent books at a low price, and staked everything on it’
Sir Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books.
The first affordable quality books for a mass audience were brought out by Penguin nearly eighty years ago. And while much has changed since then, the way we read books is only now becoming different. Sometimes it is still only a hardback or paperback book that will do. But at other times we prefer to read on something either more portable – a dedicated reading device or our smart mobile phone – or more connected, such as a tablet or a computer.
Where we are or how much time we have often decides what it is we will read next.
Penguin Shorts and Penguin Specials are designed to fill a gap. They are short, they are original and affordable, and they are written by some of today’s best and most exciting writers. And they are available only in digital form.
Written to be read over a long commute or a short journey, in your lunch hour or between dinner and bedtime, these brief books provide a short escape into a fictional world or act as a primer in a particular field or provide a new angle on an old subject.
Always informative and entertaining, Penguin Shorts and Penguin Specials offer excellent writing that you can read on the move or in a spare moment for less than the price of a cup of coffee.
Other PENGUIN SHORTS you could try
Who’s in Charge Here?: How Governments are Failing the World Economy
Alan Beattie
China: Rising Power, Anxious State
James Miles
The Future of Jobs: The Great Mismatch
Matthew Bishop
Personal Technology: Beyond the PC
Martin Giles
Women and Work: Closing the Gap
Barbara Beck
Video Games: All the World’s a Game
Tim Cross
The Unbearable Lightness of being a Prawn Cracker: A Selection of Real Meals
Will Self
At the Hairdresser’s
Anita Brookner
Perfect Christmas Day: 16 Essential Recipes for the Perfect Christmas
Felicity Cloake
Protection
Helen Dunmore
How to be a Rogue Trader
John Gapper
The Happiness of Blond People: A Personal Meditation on the Dangers of Identity
Elif Shafak
A Guest at the Feast: A Memoir
Colm Tóibín
How to Set Up a Free School
Toby Young
Great Battles
The Battle of Isandlwana: The Great Zulu Victory of 1879
Saul David
Great Battles
The Battle of Alamein: North Africa 1942
Colin Smith and John Bierman
Tim Cross joined The Economist as an intern in June 2004. He covered business, and then transport, energy and the environment for the Britain section, where he won the Wincott Award for Young Financial Journalist of the Year in 2005. He now works on the Science section, covering, among other things, astronomy, the space business, medicine and technology stories of all kinds. He is a regular contributor to The Economist online’s Babbage blog.
Besides those quoted in the text, many others contributed ideas, insights, contacts and suggestions to this special report, including Justin Brown, Jonnie Bryant, Edward Castranova, Sara de Freitas, Katie Goldberg, Vikas Gupta, Aubrey Hesselgren, Tim Luft, Peter Moore, Mike Morhaime, Robert Pike, Nicholas Plott, J.P. Rangaswami, Daniel Stemkoski, John Walker and Nick Yee. Others spoke on condition of anonymity. The author would like to thank them all.
*A list of sources is at
Economist.com/specialreports
A bit of the entertainment business that many other firms can learn from
OLD stereotypes die hard. Picture a video-game player and you will likely imagine a teenage boy, by himself, compulsively hammering away at a game involving rayguns and aliens that splatter when blasted. Ten years ago—an aeon in gaming time—that might have borne some relation to reality. But today a gamer is as likely to be a middle-aged commuter playing “Angry Birds” on her smartphone. In America, the biggest market, the average game-player is 37 years old. Two-fifths are female. Even teenagers with imaginary rayguns are more likely to be playing “Halo” with their friends than solo.
Over the past ten years the video-game industry has grown from a small niche business to a huge, mainstream one. With global sales of $56 billion in 2010, it is more than twice the size of the recorded-music industry. Despite the downturn, it is growing by almost 9% a year.
Is this success due to luck or skill? The answer matters, because the rest of the entertainment industry has tended to treat gaming as being a lucky beneficiary of broader technological changes. Video gaming, unlike music, film or television, had the luck to be born digital: it never faced the struggle to convert from analogue. In fact, there is plenty for old media to learn.
Video games have certainly been swept along by two forces: demography and technology. The first gaming generation—the children of the 1970s and early 1980s—is now over 30. Many still love gaming, and can afford to spend far more on it now. As gaming establishes itself as a pastime for adults, the social stigma and the worries about moral corruption that have historically greeted all new media, from novels to pop music, have dissipated. Meanwhile rapid improvements in computing power have allowed game designers to offer experiences that are now often more cinematic than the cinema.