Games industry looks for skill base to drive creativity

The U.A.E. video game industry, which touched Dh1 billion last year, has seen 11.5 per cent year-on-year growth since then, Microsoft's Aman Sangar told journalists at GAMES14, the video game convention which kicked off in Dubai on Thursday.
Sangar, the company's Xbox lead for the Middle East and Africa, also revealed that all available Xbox One/Kinect bundles had sold out just one week after the firm's 15 simultaneous launch events last Thursday, though he declined to say how many had been sold. He said more would be available soon, though he was unable to give a date.
"We have an install base of 370 million gaming consoles globally,” he told a press conference before the three-day event opened to the public. "We have never had such a wide demographic of gamer base.
"Games are the most interactive medium we have known. The interesting thing is that out of that $65 billion (Dh238.5 billion) dollar industry, only 42 per cent are playing on consoles. It just goes to show the size of the industry, and how other platforms have really contributed to increasing the size.”
Sangar said the Xbox One was, despite its general entertainment capabilities, was first and foremost a gaming console.
Diversity
Ian Livingstone CBE, one of the most respected figures in gaming (and who has recently unlocked the achievement of outliving his title of Life President of Eidos Interactive to his list of accomplishments), was at the event for the first time since its inception in 2008.
"The games industry is becoming more and more diverse, but we have to put it into context,” he said. "If you compare us with the film industry, we are still in the 1930s. It started off with guys making content for guys. As the industry has grown, women are now enjoying games. Male, female, young and old, everyone is enjoying games.
"We have to bring more diversity into the production of games to reflect the enjoyment by everybody in playing games. Diversity has to represent different cultures, has to represent more than just the narrow content with which it originally started.
"Games are now a genuine artform. They are culturally, socially and economically important. It's the largest entertainment industry in the world, worth $90 billion a year in revenues.
"With that growth comes responsibility. The games industry is a responsible industry and is reflecting its content by giving more women and more people from different ethnic backgrounds a different and diverging impact in the creation of games.”
Yannick Theler, of Ubisoft Abu Dhabi, said: "Here in the Middle East there's such diversity of people. It was very important for us to come. In Abu Dhabi now we are close to 50 people after three years, 20 different nationalities already, and 20, 25 per cent of people coming from the region. That's very important. We are trying to bring jobs here, and teach people how to create new games.”
Livingstone said what was needed to boost the games industry — including the local games industry — was skills.
Recommendations
"Console games is a mature marketplace. The cost of entry is prohibitive for new entrants to come in — half a million dollars to make Destiny. It's very difficult and expensive to launch a new IP.
"On the other hand there's incredible opportunity, in PC downloads and particularly mobile, for new players to make new ways of playing, new games for different people. But for every Angry Birds, of course, there are 20,000 dead birds.”
Livingtone, who was commissioned in 2010 to write a report on how to improve children's computer skills by the British government, added: "The ICT curriculum that exists in English schools is largely teaching children how to use technology, but they have no insight into how to create their own technology. On top of our recommendations was to put computer science on top of the curriculum as an essential discipline.
"What we need is programmers, artist and animators. I'm delighted that the English government recently took up all our recommendations.
"This is not just about video games. This is all creative industries. We are exponentially more reliant on technology. To get kids coding is the first step.”