When you think of the Australian gaming industry it is hard to say that we are the pioneers and world leaders in the field. But personally, before further investigation into this topic, I did not understand why we weren’t as prominent in this industry compared to our European and American counterparts.
The McCrea (2013) reading claims that this can be put down to multiple differing reasons, some of which were out of our control. Referring to Australia’s once weak dollar in comparison to the US and UK, McCrea described one cause stating, “different factors are corralled to explain the collapse of the industry in this period, each interconnected and forming an inexorable vicious cycle. The strengthening Australian dollar, especially as the global financial crisis devastated other Western economies, made Australia a less attractive production partner” (2013).
This among the list of other negative factors to the industry would have to be the most damaging, when a large portion of the Australian industry adopted the ‘work-for-hire’ model – where “the larger Australian studios were working with American and European publishers on games under license”(2013). It was always going to be working well while the Australian dollar was weak but as soon as it began to grow the tables would be turned – and they were.
Since this turn the majority of gaming companies holding this work-for-hire structure were “bought, shrunk, merged, or closed—often all four in that order” (2013) and so we see Australia become a much smaller player in the global industry.
However, if we can learn anything from the huge successes Australian developers working on mobile games for smart phone and tablet devices, such as Halfbrick Studio’s Fruit Ninja released in 2010, it is that the gaming industry in this country is far from dead. These small independent companies are standing tall in the crowded market, and must continue to grow if Australia is to be competitive on a global scale.
Reference:
McCrea, C 2013, “Australian Video Games: The Collapse and Reconstruction of an Industry”, Gaming Globally, pp. 203-207
Zac T McCall 