MOVIES VS VIDEO GAMES - WHO'S A BIGGER WINNER?

Have you ever wondered how many people work on a video game compared to a major Hollywood movie? If so, then please note, you’re not alone on this, because my good friends over at the Casino Kings have often wondered exactly the same thing, especially since the gaming industry has exponentially grown over the years and attracted big-name talent and big-time bucks.





This wasn’t always the case, though, as once upon a time the vast majority of video games were created by small teams of dedicated programmers with a passion for bringing their imagination to life. Such as the nine-man team behind 'Pac-Man', for instance, which was designed in 1980 by the legendary game developer, Toru Iwatani. Here, check out the following table to see five vintage video games and how many people were behind them.

After a while, though, video games made their way into the mainstream and this caused profits to rise, technology to improve, and investments to increase. So much so, in fact, that according to the latest market report carried out by Newzoo (2018 edition), they usually generate more revenue than ticket sales at the box office, with the gaming industry accumulating £107bn ($137bn) per year, while the film industry gets about £32bn ($42bn). According to the Casino Kings, however, this might not be entirely true. To see what I mean, please have a look at the two graphs they created below, which denote the top ten highest-grossing video games and movies of the past decade.

So, from the looks of it, the amount of people required to make a theatrical blockbuster far outweighs the amount of people required to make a video game (even though the gap has been considerably reduced since the nine-man 'Pac-Man' days). Having said that, though, there is still some debate over how much each industry is able to earn from their respective wares. On the one hand, the research compiled by the Casino Kings has been able to show us that movies generate more money than video games (thus contradicting Newzoo’s earlier findings). While on the other hand, the gaming industry isn’t always willing to divulge what they make via microtransactions (which is said to be considerably more than what most movies make). So, to resolve this dispute, fight...

Ok. So what have we learned from all of this? Well, for a start, I’d say that it takes fewer people to create a video game than it does a movie, but in the same breath, the profit margin for video games can be much more lucrative (if only you believe that microtransactions have the ability to notably increase revenue).

Similarly, the amount of time people spend with each form of entertainment is another factor we also have to consider when comparing the two. After all, an average film lasts for approximately one hour and twenty minutes from start to finish, unless it’s a classic, in which case, it'll last longer and fans will watch it more than once. Whereas video game engagement, on the other hand, is huge in comparison, with a single user normally playing a single game for over one hour and twenty minutes per day. So, at a rough guess, I'd say the shift between the two will most probably level up over the next decade or so. Not in engagement, but how much profit can be made from each one.