A Study of the Roles and Impacts of Computer Games in the Economy

Computer games are enjoyed by a wide range of people, irrespective of age or sex. Beginning with the relatively simple games in the 1950s, the computer game industry has been developing rapidly (Brookhaven National Laboratory, n.d.). Especially after the spread of internet services and personal computers, computer games are a regular part of our lives. Successfully adapting to consumers’ demand and expectations, the computer game industry currently supports the various countries’ economies. This critique will discuss how computer games contribute to the economic growth and a contemporary financial issue the computer game industry is facing.

The computer game industry creates jobs for professional developers and players. In order to produce games of high quality to attract consumers, computer games essentially require complex algorithms. This implies that the game industry requires skillful programmers to handle the algorithms. According to Simply Hired (2010b), programmers in the U.S. annually earn $72,000 USD. This is much more significant compared to the average college graduate salary of $46,000 USD (Simply Hired, 2010a). By paying high salaries to programmers, the computer game industry contributes to stimulating the economy. Not only the developers but also professional players play their significant roles in the economy. Professional gamers can make money either by contributing to the producers or to the consumers. In the former case, professional players test games to find bugs and to improve the quality of the games by commenting on the games. In the latter case, professional gamers can carry out the real-money trading which is to exchange the virtual items, virtual currencies or characters and real money, which can be seen among players in massively multiplayer online games. Professional gamers can also make money by creating and editing strategy guides to give hints and solutions to specific computer games so that other players can complete the game more easily. In addition to programmers and professional gamers, the computer industry relies on and pays market analysts, customer service representatives, and foreign language translators (Crandall and Sidak, 2010). Without the computer game industry, a great amount of people would come to be unemployed. In these ways, the computer game industry is crucial for many people to keep the current income levels.

The computer game industry stimulates money flow by advancing technologies. For example, the demand for faster CPUs for computer games led to the creation of microprocessor architecture called the Cell Broadband Engine Architecture (CBEA) by STI which is an alliance formed by Sony, Toshiba and IBM (IBM Research, n.d.). By applying the high-performance processing to game consoles, the CBEA allowed the fast portrayal of images, which successfully relieved consumers’ stress and contributed to the image quality improvement. This project to invent the CBEA cost $400 million, which must have stimulated money circulation in the world (QJ.net, 2006). Moreover, according to the IBM, the CBEA is also applicable to cryptography, physics, and scientific workloads. In this way, the strive for satisfying consumers’ expectations led to spending a great amount of money, and successfully developed the technology which is further applicable in other fields. Technological developments in the computer game industry will conduce to the age of high mass-consumption, and eventually to the economic growth (Nordtveit, 2010). By enhancing the liquidity of money, innovation of technologies enriches people and the nations.

ROM image leakages and emulators would cause the functional decline of the computer game industry by financially advantaging consumers and disadvantaging producers. In the same way as game consoles load their software, emulators can load ROM images extracted from the commercial software on the computer. While sharing ROMs on the internet is illegal, there are thousands of websites that allow people to download ROMs. Even though copyright holders and game managing organizations try to restrict the illegal activities, they have difficulty preventing the spread of ROMs. This problem is related to the economy because producers will come to gain fewer revenues to produce new games. As consumers try to minimize spending, they will not pay the computer game companies for the software or consoles. Instead, players will download games for free through the internet and play on their computers as long as the quality of the games is almost the same. As a result of the decrease in the demand for the computer games in the market, game companies will have to lower the price of the games in order to induce consumers to even if only slightly pay for their goods and services. It is also possible for game companies to decrease the quality of their games because of less monetary resource available. Although this appears to be disadvantageous to players as well, they can enjoy other entertainments such as anime and social network services such as Facebook. The illegal activities excessively empower consumers and fiscally damage the computer game industry.

The world’s economy cannot be successful without the computer game industry. Many people rely on the jobs in the fields related to the computer game industry in order to afford their needs and wants. Technological developments in the computer game industry further boost the economy as they involve a great amount of monetary tractions. Yet, the industry’s significant role in the economy is interrupted by players’ illegal activities that economically ravage the producers and hamper money flows. While computer games can be replaced with other entertainments for general players, the industry is essential to maintain the current standards of living in many countries. The governments may need to protect the computer game industry from the illegal activities in order to ensure the prosperity of their nations.

References

1. Brookhaven National Laboratory. (n.d.). The first video game?. A passion for discovery. Retrieved on November 23, 2010, from http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/history/higinbotham4.asp
2. Crandall, W.R., and Sidak, J.G. (2010). Video games: Serious business for America’s economy. Entertainment software association. Retrieved on November 24, 2010, from http://www.theesa.com/newsroom/seriousbusiness.pdf
3. IBM Research. (n.d.). The Cell project at IBM Research. IBM research. Retrieved on November 23, 2010, from http://www.research.ibm.com/cell/
4. Nordtveit, B.H. (2010, October 6). CCGL9005 session eight: Growth theories [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://broadening.edu.hku.hk/mod/resource/view.php?id=299
5. QJ.net. (2006, April 6). Cell designer talks about PS3 and IBM cell processors. PC Gaming, PlayStation, Wii, Nintendo DS, Xbox 360, news, reviews, downloads, custom apps, homebrew and much more. Retrieved on November 23, 2010, from http://www.qj.net/qjnet/playstation-3/cell-designer-talks-about-ps3-and-ibm-cell- processors.html
6. Simply Hired. (2010a, November 23). Programmer salaries. Job search made simple. Retrieved on November 23, 2010, from http://www.simplyhired.com/a/salary/search/q-college+graduate
7. Simply Hired. (2010b, November 23). Programmer salaries. Job search made simple. Retrieved on November 23, 2010, from http://www.simplyhired.com/a/salary/search/q-programmer