Social games are changing the industry

Halfway into my internship at Ubisoft. It keeps getting better. After working on various projects in digital casual games, my supervisor put me on the GRO team.
GRO stands for Ghost Recon Online. Ghost Recon is a award winning, 10 years old franchise, based on best selling author Tom Clancy novels. The background story revolves around a fictional secret military unit (the Ghosts), which serves as the last resort of the U.S. Army when stuff gets really bad. The games have generally been first or third person shooters , with a strong emphasis on cooperation and team strategy. Ghost Recon online will be a free to play game. Players will download it on their computers and play online for free. Thanks to Ross , a lot of us ended up working with great stuff such as bleach, food, drugs.. or Ghost Recon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-6P5rE9L4o

As the title of this post mention, Social games are changing the videogame industry. and this is good news for any MBA who wants to be in this field. The industry has been recession proof since the nineties, and thanks to Facebook, broadband and the Nintendo Wii, a new , huge market was born. Social and Casual games are all the games that.. people who dont play videogames play. Farmville, Cityville, Bejeweled, but even Guitar Hero, Angry Birds are played by women in careers, bored fathers, grandparents. The market is so much wider and there is so much money to be made. Companies like Zynga receive skyhigh valuations , while giants like EA purchase smaller companies (Playfish, Popcap maybe) for impressive prices. Social gaming is about number, how many people play, how many people pay. It is not as artistic as gaming , and require a lot of analysis, promotion, marketing strategy and pricing. Several MBAs are getting into those new companies, using their business skills to improve the games and to find out what happens behind the scene. While I cant say I love casual and social games now, I am very intrigued in seeing what will happen and how this industry will evolve. It feels like the videogame industry is going to change impressively (probably in less than 10 years we will have no consoles anymore), and the industry leaders are acting as pioneers. I cant wait to see what will happen in five or six years, and how the whole system will evolve. And hopefully, I would like to be a part of this.
Speak soon.
Nicola,

The game goes on

Hey all,

Sorry for the delay. Life at Ubisoft is going great! Now that E3, the most important videogame exhibition in the world, is over, my supervisor has more free time and my deadlines get tighter every day. People here are great. For the first time I understand the meaning of fitting into the company culture. We all love games, we are all young, we are all laid back, and we all want to make an impact in the industry. While there are only two other interns here (great people too!!) I am bonding with the full time staff and hope to leave the company with some good new friends. This week I have a major presentation to the VP who is responsible for my project. I am a not too nervous, since I worked with this executive a lot during my MAP, but I am still trying to perfect my deliverable and really want to make a good impression (I wanna come back here next year!!).
I am developing my macro project in micro or medium steps. For now, I am done with two parts of it, that include presentation, documents and charts. I like to work in this way because I can assess the result of my work more easily. The videogame industry is going through major changing because of Facebook, Iphones and Online games. This is a great time to enter and I am participating to every networking event I can attend. I went to one last week and were able to meet several people from the mobile gaming industry. Videogames are like some sort of brotherhoods, very networking basis. It seems like the most important thing is working hard to get your foot in the door, and then passing from one company to the other is relatively easy. I am heading out to another of those events right ne now , will let you know how it goes.

MBA & Videogames

Hi, my name is Nicola. I am a rising second year MBA from Italy. Videogames have always been one of my greatest passions. I've been an hardcore player since I was able to handle my NES joypad. When I came to Ross, I was wondering about what career path I would have choose. At the time, I considered the Electronic entertainment industry as an unreachable dream, since it is a pretty close circle and companies usually don't hire international students. I decided to network with videogame companies, but to pursue a more typical MBA career path.
However, Ross was able to exceed my ambitions by far. Thanks to a great alumni network and the power of MAP, I will spend the summer at the legendary software house Ubisoft Entertainment, in downtown San Francisco.
My title is "Active Game Manager", apparently the job involves a mix between product management and videogame production, and is therefore very creative. I will work on a major videogame franchise, but at this time it is not clear what I will do on a daily basis. Whatever it is, it's extremely exciting. Ubisoft is at the forefront of game developing, having released hits like Assassins Creed , Just Dance and Splinter Cell. The company is very informal and the offices are extremely cool and well located. I really can't wait to begin on the 23rd of this month.
Will let you know more A.S.A.P.