[MUD-Dev] Games are Hot. Period

[Freeman]

From: Richard Aihoshi aka Jonric

> In the comparisons I recall seeing between the games and movie
> industries, the comparisons have only ever used retail sales for
> the former versus box office receipts for the latter.  This
> completely ignores merchandising et al, where it seems likely that
> the movie industry brings in far more money than do games.

Sometimes, a movie *is* "merchandising".  Sometimes it's the other
way around.  Aren't the pokemon movie and television show and comic
book and collectible card game merely merchandising for the pokemon
game?  Or are they all, game included, merchandising for the
intellectual property? (and if so, how can you make meaningful
comparisons between one medium and the next?)

If there's a comic book made of a movie, - Star Wars, for example -
then you'd count the comic book revenue as "merchandising" and say
the movie industry ought to be counted for that income as well as
for the income from the movie itself.  Fair enough.  How about the
other way around?  Do you count the profit from Spider-man as money
made by the comic book industry, or the movie industry?  Are movies
based on novels merely "merchandizing" for the book publishing
industry?

'Cause if you go that route then the movie industry doesn't make
much money at all.
 
> Whether this is a fair comparison, whether console sales should be
> included with games and other questions are matters of opinion,
> but in order to form informed opinions, I think it's important to
> know what's actually being compared.

Box office sales to Box sales is the only meaningful thing that can
be compared.  Anything else, and you're bringing some other
industry's revenue into the picture.

At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter: a successful IP
will be a movie and a game and a series of comic books and badly
written novels and coloring books and happymeal toys and so on.  How
you ever could decide to classify that entire line of products as
"Movie money" (or not) is beyond me.
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