For our industry to continue to grow at its current rate of acceleration, we need to attract talent from other industries as well as more new graduates. The industry has become overly reliant on playing recruitment chess - taking employees from one competitor and then losing their own in return. This never ending game benefits no one, results in stalemate and does not meet the industry's needs for fresh perspective and growth.

A simple Google search for “games industry” reveals a number of preconceptions of what working in gaming is like. Today I'd like to acknowledge common perceptions and break through some of these myths. Together, we can debunk these myths and grow the industry with a new generation of talent.

Top Myths About Working In Gaming

- Work Hard/Play Hard
- Getting Lost In The Crowd
- Jobs, Not Careers
- Old Demographic Paradigms

It's an interesting little piece, more so if you're dying to get into the industry, I'm sure. I'll take the shark-infested waters of academia any day, but that's just me.

Making The Game Industry An Attractive Place To Work [GameCareerGuide]

Lightspeed, a venture capital firm, checked out the average revenue per user for some casual, free to play MMOGs (Club Penguin, Habbo Hotel, Runescape, and Second Life), establishing that other that SL - which pulls in a little over $9 a month in ARPU, thanks mostly to virtual land upkeep - these sorts of casual MMOGs pull in around $1.25 ARPU per month. Which, until one considers the user bases of games like Club Penguin, seems like a damn hard way to make some money:

Second Life: $9.30/mthly user/mth
Club Penguin: $1.62/mthly user/mth
Habbo: $1.30/mthly user/mth
Runescape: $0.84/mthly user/mth

Having spoken to many other MMOGs and virtual worlds on a private basis, this estimate seems to be a good gauge for what a well performing MMOG can aspire to from a free to play business model.

Left out are a number of other popular MMOGs like MapleStory; I'd be curious to see firmer statistics for a wider spread of games, though the comments section does include some speculative numbers for a few other games.

Successful MMOGs can see $1-2 in monthly ARPU [Lightspeed via Worlds In Motion]

My summer will be filled with exactly the same things my school year is (herding students along to enlightenment, reading, and research), minus pesky seminars, but for the younger generation, gainful summer employment is getting harder to come by. One solution? Turning to virtual worlds for employment:

In the real world, summer jobs are in short supply. Only about a third of teenagers are expected to work this summer, the lowest levels in 60 years, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. Summer youth employment has fallen from about 45% of teens in 2000, a downward trend made worse this year by the faltering economy.

But money-making opportunities in virtual worlds have grown as such sites go mainstream.

The WSJ piece also has a look at seven high school and college students who have been making virtual worlds — what they do and how much they make.

My Virtual Summer Job [The Wall Street Journal via Virtual Worlds News]

This untapped potential of games upsets the very foundation of advertising as we know it. Instead of surrounding us with images that reflect lives unlived, games can allow us to try out hypothetical lives with new products, people and ideas. To realise this potential, advertisers of both goods and viewpoints must stop blindly inserting their billboards into games or creating feeble copies of the cornerstones of videogame pop culture. Instead, they must start simulating the products, public policy positions, charitable interventions and other worldly ideas in new games - games worthy of our attention.

I'm not sure I want to see advergames all over the place, but if we have to put up with in-game advertising, a little more sophistication would be welcomed.

Advertisers have yet to unlock the power of play [The Guardian]

Games that don't recognize that key fact have what we call a "false depth economy"; a situation in which currency is rapidly devalued until it becomes irrelevant - or possibly even aggravating - to gameplay. Remember putting rupees back into chests in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess? Or ignoring the store in Star Fox Adventures entirely after the first few hours? These are both bright examples of what happens when the economy doesn't work as planned.

I can't argue that good games haven't fallen to this problem before but succeeded nonetheless. Nobody is going to throw down Twilight Princess in disgust over rupee returns. But I can assure you that it's a design problem that every designer wishes they could take back and fix, and one that every player will write down as a negative about their overall experience with a game.

He lays out three principles that ought to be followed — it's a quick article and worth a read if you're interested in game design.

Single Player Economist [Moogle.net via GameSetWatch]

The broker started coverage of the video-game sector with a neutral rating. In a report, analyst Eric Handler noted that the market is growing, with new gamers attracted by "interesting hardware choices" that are driving "greater creativity" among video-game publishers.

However, he added that slower sales of new consoles than expected and " overextended" company valuations will limit upside in the group for the near term.

Financial stuff makes my head spin; I guess it's a good thing I'm going into a field where I'll be broke for the rest of my life, thus not having to worry about it.

Video-game Stocks Have Limited Upside For Now, Lehman Say [CNN Money]