Video games, like comics before them, have been derided as kids stuff. Maybe too violent/ a sign of misspent youth/ middle age/ or whatever. Wrong. Games are business. Take massively multi- player games. www.Runescape.com  is one. Kids all over the world, by word of mouth, email, IM and cellphone, sign up, (free)and play against each other in the hundreds of thousands (126,000 this morning). They earn points. Live on-line lives. Learn strategy. Some pay for an extra package of play. That's English based Runescape's business model. Free basic, extra pay.

Its everywhere, too. Take Vietnam where a Chinese originated game opened for on-line business the other day. 50,000 Vietnamese signed up to play beforehand, 100,000 were on line the opening weekend. Each day now, at least 750,000 hours are played. And paid for.  www.volam.com.vn is the game, the company,  www.vinagame.com.vn. It's lead by Bryan Pelz , a super-smart guy who started one of France's leading portal's and used to CEO a search company out of LA.

Comics taught kids to read. Video games are teaching them about computers and strategy and technology. And paying for better packages. Great  games fuse cinema, action and strategy. Any wonder movies are having a hard time attracting young teens at the moment? 

This entry was posted on August 15, 2005 at 8:40 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Main Page by Richard McKinnon No Comments Yet