Friday, September 30, 2005

Sequential gamers it’s always greener on the other side

I was reading an article on the escapist magazine (which I found via Penny-Arcade) that was talking about the current business model of the video game industry is destroying smaller developers and creativity, when something struck me. In the article Costikyan states that one of the problems of the video game industry is that video game industry is lacking a fan base that buys more independent artistic products like the movie and comic book industries and games need a market to sell those types of games like the other two industries have.

The reason why this statement stuck out is being a fan of comic books and reading comic book message boards and many in the comic industry are envious of the success of the video game market. You see while everyone is talking about how the video game industry has boomed (the video game industry is now making more money then the movie industry) the comic industry is very far past it’s apex. So both industries need what the other has at the moment.

It also should be noted that the smaller comic book publishers in a similar position as the video game industry in the terms of retail. Both the majority of retailers focus most of there effort of the bigger selling titles (that more then like come from the bigger companies).

The biggest advantage (maybe more so then the comic shop since the game industry does have a few stores that only or mostly sales games) that comics have over the video game industry maybe the fact that they are much cheaper to produce then video games. So they don’t need to sell as much to a profit as the video game company does. If it cost some where around 10 to 20 million to make a graphic novel I would bet that the smaller publishers would be in the same spot as the smaller game developers. Because most of the comic fans stuck to the big two publishers and many retailers keep most if not all of their focus on those companies.


*Hmmm I wonder if a number of retailers popped up that focused on the indy games and comics would they do well and would they have any effect on helping both markets. I could see cross over in both markets.

2 comments:

Darv said...

An independent software store. Sounds like an intresting idea. Don't know how it would work in small cities, seems to nitchy. It woudl probably work in larger cities though.

Martin Jackson said...

True, if indy video game stores pop the likelihood is that they would end up more in big cities or college towns then small towns.

But that is true with stores that sale mostly indy movies, music, comic and/or what ever else you have