The more I have been thinking about software as a service, the more I realize that the game biz has been way out in front on this idea. Companies like Valve and Sony Online have been doing some really cool stuff in terms of delivering online content and experimenting with new revenue and publishing models.
This weekend the Journal had a (somewhat shallow) overview of the industry with photos/bios of some of the key players. Games are dismissed by many as "childish" or "amusements", but there is serious business here to watch and learn from.
The Power Players
Videogames are reshaping the entertainment business. But the moguls who make them are still largely unknowns. Our look at how the game is played.
February 18, 2006
World of Warcraft is a blockbuster that's brought in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue so far, and is still going strong -- a bonanza that puts it among some big action hits.
But Warcraft isn't a movie. It's an online videogame with 5.5 million subscribers, most of whom pay $15 a month to join other gamers in slaying dragons and other adversaries. A creative force behind this epic is someone most people haven't heard of: Rob Pardo, vice president of design at game company Blizzard Entertainment.
The movie business with its Spielbergs and Weinsteins is a larger-than-life world whose machinations and personalities are widely known, right down to who sits where at Spago. But the moguls of videogames -- which by some measures now overshadow the film business -- are still mostly anonymous outside their own circle.
Yet the power players of this $27.5 billion industry are becoming as influential in entertainment as movie directors and studio honchos. There's designer Will Wright, a chain-smoking part-time collector of Soviet space memorabilia whose talent for hit-making is matched perhaps only by the Nintendo executive who came up with the idea for Mario Bros. while staring out of a train window one day. Then there's Peter Moore, a former shoe salesman and professional soccer player who's now leading Microsoft's charge to displace Sony's PlayStation business as king of game hardware.
