sábado, 22 de dezembro de 2018

A Word About the Brazilian Gaming Market

(NOTE: this content is a teaser from my HCI's 2019 paper and the last post of this year)

The Brazilian gaming market is full of opportunities and peculiarities. The country is well-known abroad for being an emergent field where new game ideas can be explored, andalso for its high levels of piracy, unfortunately. In a certain way, the country is a unique “ecosystem” where different business models and creative processes can be explored, given the size and the diversity of its population, of almost 220 million people.

The gaming industry in Brazil is not consolidated though, and under many aspects it is still in an initial stage. As a first step into our discussion, we can highlight some attributes of the Brazilian gaming market, using as reference the data collected in an important survey named Game Brazil Research 2018 (Pesquisa Game Brasil 2018, in Portuguese), conducted by the company Sioux Games.



In its fifth edition, the research comprised interviews with 2853 people, in an attempt to investigate some demographic, consumption and behavioral aspects of the Brazilian gaming field. The first information we need to highlight is the fact that 75.5% of the Brazilian population plays games in a wide range of platforms, like smartphones, tablets, computers, consoles, portable consoles, etc.

According to this research, the gamer audience in Brazil is mainly cross-platform,with 74% of players experiencing games on more than one device. Smartphones lead the numbers as the most popular gaming platforms in Brazil (37.6%), while consoles occupy the second place (28.8%), followed by computers, in third place (26.4%).

Another interesting piece of information from Game Brazil Research 2018 concerns the self-image of the Brazilian gamer audience: only 6.1% of the respondents considered themselves to be “hardcore” gamers. Most of the interviewed people identified themselves as casual gamers.

It was also remarkable, in the research about mobile games, that 60.7% of respondents said they played while in transit (bus, subway or car).

Finally, it is noteworthy that 53.6% of Brazilian gamers are women, and among the female audience the favorite platform is mobile (59%), in which they spend an average of one to three hours a week playing games.

From these preliminary data, it is possible to understand that Brazil is a fertile ground for mobile games and a place with high potential for new gaming business in this field.

There are no massive game publishers in Brazil yet, and mobile platforms like App Store (Apple) and Play Store (Google) constitute interesting opportunities for game designers, indie studios and small gaming companies to showcase their work, in Brazil and abroad.

#GoGamers

terça-feira, 4 de dezembro de 2018

A brief discussion about newsgames

In contemporary times, games have undoubtedly taken a protagonist role in different areas. We can find games as educational tools, in marketing campaigns, training employees in companies or just entertaining certain audiences. Games are a powerful media and a rich platform to share meaningful messages.

Based on these thoughts, games also can be used as a platform for journalism content. It is possible to think strategically the use of games to spread news, discuss current events or critically think about one specific subject discussed in the media. This category of game can be considered what some specialists call “newsgame”.



About the use of games in this field, it is relevant to emphasize that “journalism can and will embrace new modes of thinking about news in addition to new modes of production. Rather than just tack-on a games desk or hire an occasional developer on contract, we contend that newsgames will offer valuable contributions only when they are embraced as a viable method of practicing journalism – albeit a different kind of journalism than newspapers, television, and web pages offer” (BOGOST; FERRARI; SCHWEIZER, 2010, p.10).

In the book entitled “Newsgames: journalism at play” (2010), Bogost, Ferrari and Schweizer discuss several categories of this type of game. In this post I want to highlight one of them: the “current event games”. According to these authors, this kind of newsgame aims to dwell over some fact occurring in this moment in the world using a ludic interface.

One interesting case of “current event games” that we can bring to this post is the experimental game September 12th. Created by the Uruguayan game designer and researcher Gonzalo Frasca, September 12th suggests a reflection about the day after the terrorist attacks in New York on September 11th; the interface shows a Middle-Eastern village with some terrorists with weapons and civilians and the only thing you can do is aim and shoot bombs to kill the characters. The interesting thing is: every time you kill a terrorist you also kill civilians and other civilians around – when noticing the fact – become new terrorists in an infinite cycle of death and violence (BOGOST; FERRARI; SCHWEIZER, 2010, p.11, 12 & 13).

In the video below it is possible to understand the gameplay:



Once again, games are occupying an even more relevant role in the contemporary scenario. The gaming use for news is one more aspect to reflect on how ludic languages can reach different audiences in the quotidian life. If you are interested in this gaming category, I strongly suggest the site Molle Industria to try other examples of newsgames.

#GoGamers



Reference:

BOGOST, Ian; FERRARI, Simon; SCHWEIZER, Bobby. Newsgames: journalism at play. Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2010.