A 'Grand Theft' Experience – The Gaming Industry
“Kids don’t even read comic books anymore. They’ve got more important things to do – like video games.” – Ang Lee (American Film Director)
“The worst thing a kid can say about homework is that it is too hard. The worst thing a kid can say about a game is it’s too easy.” – Henry Jenkins (American Media Scholar)
Today, entertainment has gone way beyond movies, comedy, and sports, etc. This mammoth industry has found a new partner in the form of an interactive industry – The Gaming Industry. This industry over the past few years has found significant growth in terms of marketing and sales.
Modern Personal Computers (PCs) owe many advancements and innovations to the gaming industry. Sound, Graphic Cards including 3D Graphic Accelerators, faster Central Processing Units (CPUs), and dedicated Co-processors like PhysX are a few of the more notable improvements.
Modern games are among the most highly demanded resources in computers and consoles. Gamers purchase high-powered PCs to power the latest cutting-edge games. Thus everything that surrounds software development is due in part to this industry whose games demand faster processors than business or personal applications. Hence it wouldn’t be a surprise to know that this industry has surpassed the annual gross revenue of both Pop Music and Hollywood Films.
Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto V is one such virtual game that hit the store shelves recently. Grand Theft Auto V is not only a preposterously enjoyable video game but also an intelligent and sharp-tongued satire of contemporary America. It’s technically more accomplished in every conceivable way, but it’s also tremendously ambitious in its own right. No other world in video games comes close to this in size or scope, and there is sharp intelligence behind its sense of humor and gift for mayhem.
Industry analysts estimate the amount of money spent on the production of GTA V to be between $200 million to $250 million. Grand Theft Auto V is the United Kingdom’s fastest-selling game of all time, having sold just over 2.25 million copies in five days. It then hit its $1 billion mark in worldwide sales within the first 10 days of its release. Without any doubt, this game can be considered as one of the best video games ever made.
In any rising industry, we generally find problems that stand as a barrier to its progress and this industry claims Software Piracy to be an obstacle. In addition, Digital Rights Management and other measures have proved noticeably unpopular with gamers. Hence, tackling them, in the long run, will be an added agenda in the minds of game developers, who already invest a lot of time and effort into developing this high-end entertainment software let alone try and prevent it from being used, sold and pirated illegally to a huge market of illegal gaming avenues.
These days game developers incline towards enhancing their games in such a way that it looks closer to real-life experiences and boy, haven’t they succeeded? Without a shadow of a doubt, the gaming industry has taken the entertainment world by a storm and there is seemingly no end to this highly mesmerizing drama.