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By Ike Suarez, Correspondent
The game developer industry—the “baby” of the Philippine BPO
sector—is projected to earn three million dollars in 2008 and
seven million dollars by 2010, according to an IT industry analyst
who once was chief researcher of the Canadian-owned IT industry
research firm, XMG Inc.
Speaking at a session at the two-day BPO Summit
2008 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Cesar Tolentino said the projected
2008 revenues will be generated by slightly over 20 companies
employing a total of close to 500 computer programmers as well as
graphic artists.
According to Tolentino, Philippine game
developers in three years time are expected to have only 0.1 percent
of the global market for computer games, a sector projected to reach
$30 billion annually by 2010.
He said that in the value chain of game
development outsourcing, what is handed out to Philippine companies
are the prototyping, development of the program, artistic work and
musical work. Concept design, testing, and release and maintenance
are done by the client publisher or are outsourced elsewhere.
Tolentino said most game development projects
outsourced to the Philippines are for mobile and PDA platforms. A
smaller percentage of projects is for arcade games even as there is
now an emerging project segment for console games such as those for
Nintendo Wii and the Microsoft Xbox.
Tolentino added that despite its infancy, the
small game developer industry has already chalked a few notable
achievements: one firm developed in 2007 a 3D graphics engine now
being offered for licensing to developers worldwide; a number of
games have won international awards; and a developer introduced in
2007 the Philippines’ very first totally homegrown online casual
game.
The 3D graphics engine is the Pixelstream
Graphics Engine developed by Pixlestream.
In addition, Anino Entertainment’s, “Defend
a Land Enraged” developed in 2003 won that year an award for audio
innovation at the Independent Games Festival in San Francisco,
California. This same firm again won an award for best use of
connectivity in 2007 at the Barcelona International Mobile Gaming
Awards.
Vitas Development in 2007 introduced what could
be the very first locally developed online casual game,”
Bangu-Bang Mania!.”
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