2. THE ‘TENT POLE’ BUSINESS MODEL
• This is when the publisher releases at least one big-budget
blockbuster game and then uses the money that they make off-
of this game to invest into riskier and more creative projects.
• An example of this is the Grand Theft Auto franchise which
brings in a lot of revenue for Rockstar which allows them to
invest in smaller games such as ‘Bully’, ‘LA Noire’ and ‘Agent’
which in-turn allows them to diversify their content.
• A disadvantage of using this method is that the developers are
gambling on the big –budget game that they have released to
be a success. An example of this method turning out badly was
when EA released “Spore”. The game sold 1 million copies in
just 17 days but due to the development costs being so large;
EA didn’t make its money back for another 5 years.
3. THE HOLLYWOOD MODEL
• This is when developers will actually contract out
parts of the game (i.e. art, car physics, quality
assurance) to rival companies in an attempt to lower
development costs.. This means instead of having a
permanent full-time development team of 50+
people, they will instead only need a development
team of around 10-20 people who will piece the work
together that is under-taken by specialist external
teams.
• This development team would need to include
specialists such as programmers, game designers,
script writers etc.
4. INDEPENDENT GAME DEVELOPMENT
• In the past; the game development industry was a tough
business which would usually require developers to have a
publishing contract in order to publish games so that they
could pay the licence fee for releasing a game. However,
in the modern era of gaming a new sector of games has
risen; indie games (thanks to things such as the App Store
and the Xbox Live Market Place). The term “indie” is short
for independent as these games are fully independent
games that are usually only created by small studios with
a small amount of employees.
• An example of an indie game that has done extremely
well in recent years is Minecraft. The game is an open-
world sandbox and was made by a small studio known as
Mojang and the game quickly rose to become one of the
most downloaded games on Xbox, PS4 and PC.
5. DEVELOPING FOR THE IPHONE
• In February 2008, Apple released a software development
kit known “iPhone SDK”. This is a free download that is
targeted at third-party developers so that they can upload
apps onto the App Store. However, they must also be
enrolled in the iPhone Developer program which requires a
monthly payment of $99 a year which allows you to upload
your apps to the App Store via iPhone SDK.
• A prime example of this is Doodle Jump which was
released on both iPhone and Android in April 2009 and
currently has over 4 million downloads worldwide. The
developers of this game would have had to pay a monthly
fee of $99 a year to upload their game to the App Store.
