The New Zealand Games Developer Association (NZGDA) have released the results of their annual member survey (currently at 33 studios) and the results are both highly interesting and positive for the NZ games industry.
The stats, which were collected for a 12 month period ending 31 March 2012, show that the industry is seeing some remarkable growth, a heavy focus on digitally distributed downloads and platforms, and are also seeing the rewards of original i.p creation. From NZGDA chairperson, Stephen Knightly...
(Knightly) "As the kiwi games industry matures we’re seeing that games studios are very good creators of intellectual property..
A successful game franchise can be ported to other game platforms, sell merchandise, sell music and have multiple sequels. The shelf-life of a game can be much longer than a movie franchise in many cases. After a few years that investment really begins to pay off."
The New Zealand games industry:
- released 73 commercial video games
- employs 380 full-time equivalent game developers as of 31 March 2012, a double in numbers from two years ago
- artists make 39% of the employed, another 39% are programmers
- a whopping 97% of games released were digital downloads
- unsurprisingly, 99% of sales revenue came from exports, with the largest markets being the USA and Europe
- Only 32% of the industry's revenue came from contract work which came mostly from 'serious games' such as training, health or educational games
- Royalties from intellectual property made up 13% of the local games industry's revenue
- 220 people attended the NZGDA Conference in Auckland in May, 130+ NZ developers were involved in the 48-hour Global Game Jam
The platform split:
- 60% of NZ studios released games for iPhones/iPads
- 40% released Android smartphone games
- 65% published games playable in a web browser
- 30% made PC games
Achievements:
- Flick Kick Football by PikPok reached No. 1 on the US iPhone free game charts
- Major Mayhem by Rocket Jump reached No.5
- Path of Exile crowd fund over USD$1 million in pre-purchases during its Closed Beta development
- Bloons Tower Defence 5 by NinjaKiwi has had over 60 million play with 2.5 million+ new subscriber accounts
For the entire write up by the NZGDA on the survey, head on over to the NZGDA website at nzgda.com...