Understanding the Games Industry - Industry and Marketing Trends.

This report will be about the various trends that take place throughout the gaming market and industry. Market trends are what the consumers want to buy, whilst industry trends are the popular hardware and software updates that developers are using.

Current Market Trends: 
In the UK, the portion of the gaming market with the most revenue is the digital distribution of games on consoles and PC. The revenue is roughly around £1.2 billion. This shows that gamer's are more inclined to want to buy games digitally and download them, rather than buy a physical copy of the game. On PC, this service has become increasingly popular over the years due to digital distribution platforms such as, Steam, Uplay and Battle.net becoming much more stable and widespread. With regards to consoles, most of the major console developers offer digital distribution, with Xbox Live and PlayStation Network being two of the more prominent ones. 
Currently, the most widespread gaming platform worldwide is the PC, with roughly 4 billion units having been sold since the 1970's. This is partly due to its extensive library of games, with Steam having over 13,000 games in its databases. Along with generally being more powerful and multi-purpose machines, compared to other gaming platforms, this makes PC's very popular amongst gamers, who can afford them.
However, consoles account for much more playing time, probably due to their ease of use when setting them up, as they are pre-built and designed to easily play video games. They are also usually cheaper than PC's on the whole, although the 8th generation consoles can be more costly than some of the lower-end PC's.
In the UK, roughly 33.5 million people, or 69% of the population, play some form of video game. It has also been discovered that slightly more than half of these people are in fact women.
According to some statistics, there are more people in the UK aged 45+ playing games than children and teenagers. This is mostly driven by women downloading and playing trivia/word/puzzle apps for smartphones. Because most people now own a smartphone and due to many apps being free, this allows older folk to play more games, even if it is only during a coffee break at work. 

Current Industry Trends:
VR (virtual reality), is an industry trend that has made a comeback in the past few years as increases in technology have allowed it to gain popularity, the most notable VR hardware being the Oculus Rift headset. This allows users to play the various games, as if they were actually in the simulated game-world itself, using handheld controllers to control their actions. Because of this new approach to gaming, many game companies are starting to develop VR related games, or making existing games compatible with VR headsets.
Augmented reality is another trend that has increased in popularity, most recently due to the release of Pokemon Go. This is where a live view of the real world is augmented by computer sensors such as graphics or GPS data.
Freemiums are popular industry strategies which provide games free of charge, but monetary premiums are often charged to gain extra features or virtual goods. This an often criticised strategy as it effectively gives paying players an unfair advantage over players who have used skill to get good.
Another incredibly popular trend is dlc (downloadable content). Most game developers offer dlc to some extent for their games, ranging for small, free cosmetic packs, to large,paid expansion packs that offer many more hours of gameplay. Recently, some developers have come under scrutiny for releasing dlc packs at relatively high prices, whilst not actually adding much to the game itself.

To conclude, I am personally surprised that more women play games than men, as gaming is still heavily centred around men, although if it was only about who played on consoles and PC, I am certain that the statistics would greatly swing the other way. Market trends are what the users themselves want from developers, whilst the industry trends are how developers can make more money in creative ways, whilst giving consumers more in general. If I were a game developer, I would personally avoid freemiums, as they only allow paying players to advance quickly without regard to skill or effort. I would, however, involve the use of dlc wherever possible, although I would make sure that it would be worth the price. I would also take advantage of the new VR trend and develop games with regards to that.

References:
http://www.statisticbrain.com/computer-sales-statistics/
http://store.steampowered.com/search/?category1=998
http://ukie.org.uk/research
http://www.thecreativeindustries.co.uk/industries/games/games-facts-and-figures/market-strengths-and-trends#
http://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/comment/5512465/#Comment_5512465

Design Brief

Setting:
The game takes place in a fictional, low fantasy world reminiscent of medieval Europe. As such, it encompasses and takes influence from the cultures, technologies and peoples from the year 800 A.D to the year 1500 A.D. The principal setting would take place in the borderlands between a kingdom and an empire, both on land and at sea. There would be many cities to explore, each with different cultures, as well as large rural areas dotted with villages and farms.

Story Line:
The main story is based around the second son of a powerful duke within the kingdom. As the second son, he is not expected to inherit much of his fathers lands and titles. As such, he sets off with his own gang as a mercenary/privateer in the service of the king and many other nobles. The first act would be centered around the character starting a war with the empire under orders from the king. It would be based on the battlegrounds and be highly combat based. The second act would focus on the character inheriting some titles and staying largely away from fights, dealing with the characters personal life, as the war grinds down. The third and final act would contain plots and betrayals, as well as culminating in a large battle.
There will be many different characters, all with their own motives, some friends, some enemies, some posing as friends, some posing as enemies. Many just do not care about you with careful neutrality, others could end up making it their life's work to destroy you.
Some side quests would be available, although they would be more akin to tasks. Some may be necessary to advance the overall story, but others would just be there to add character and flavour to the questline.

Gameplay:
This game will chiefly be open-world and role-playing, with quite a lot of action put in there. Your character would be largely pre-designed, however there would be some elements that the player would be able to change.  The game follows the players character as they explore the world and follow the story line and the various quests/tasks that they can find out there. It will feature skill trees and the option to level up the character, which gives them better abilities to combat the various enemies. It would also feature an enemy scaling system, so you would be constantly fighting level 5 enemies at level 30. The game would be shot from a third-person perspective throughout, and would feature many cut-scenes to progress the story along. The combat system would try to be as realistic as possible, but may contain some patterns to make it more visually appealing. Having the AI be as smart as possible is a must for the game, as it greatly increases the combat difficulty and how the NPC's react to the players actions, which in turn, makes the game much more enjoyable to the user. Dialogue and choices would have a profound affect on peoples opinions of you, as well as the overall ending of the game.