If you’re not a gamer, you probably don’t give the subject much thought. You know there’s video games out there, but you don’t play them much, except maybe some puzzles on your phone or iPod once in a while. Serious games nowadays aren’t for casual participants. They take many, many hours to complete, if they even have a completion point, which means the sort of dedication of time that either you have or you don’t. I, for one, don’t, although I sort of wish I did. I can see myself glued to the computer or Xbox, playing away for hours on end. Unfortunately—or fortunately—I have a bunch of other demands on my time. Maybe someday, when I retire, I’ll start taking over the universe…
Get a load of this:
That’s the latest big game. You play it online, and as you can see, it’s got options upon options. You actually can start taking over the universe. And here’s the real story: this little game cost about $200 million dollars to create. That puts it into the same elite financial neighborhood as the biggest budget Hollywood films. And that’s just the starting expense. Millions more will be spent to keep the game running and updated and interesting, to keep players coming back for more.
In the equation of gaming, there’s the players and there’s the creators. And that’s where the real action comes in. Games are now big business. It’s not just some guy cooking up some code in the basement. Here’s how Ben Fritz and Alex Pham, writing for the LA Times, describe this particular game, Star Wars: The Old Republic: “It may be the largest entertainment production in history. More than 800 people on four continents have spent six years and nearly $200 million creating it. The story runs 1,600 hours, with hundreds of additional hours still being written. Nearly 1,000 actors have recorded dialogue for 4,000 characters in three languages.”
That, to me, is staggering. The story runs not two or three hours like a movie, or even 20 or 30 hours like a video console game, but 1600 hours! That’s 66 days of nonstop, 24/7 gaming. And they’re going to be adding more!
This is amazing. For the whole story, read Star Wars: The Old Republic — the story behind a galactic gamble.
