The advertising industry has increasingly integrated digital game as a viable platform to deliver messages. The economic impacts of this emerging platform can also be seen globally. Digital game revenue in Asia is predicted to reach $20 billion, about 38% of the world market. As a result, higher education institutes around the world have enthusiastically developed programs to educate future multi-platform advertising professionals. In this book chapter, the author identifies selected departments, programs, or curricula in digital games among higher education institutes in both U.S. and Taiwan. This chapter describes, reports, and analyzes curricula from over 387 programs in the U.S. and 35 programs from Taiwan. An overview of these digital game curricula enables educators to better assess these programs to discuss how digital game has been taught as a viable platform. The chapter also discusses trends in program assessment to better educate future digital creative industry professionals.
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Latest data released by the Entertainment Software Association (henceforth, ESA) in its report, Video Games in the 21st Century: The 2014 Report, states that computer and video game companies directly employ over 42,000 people in thirty-six states (Siwek, 2014). In 2013 alone, the retail sales of digital games in the U.S. have reached $15.4 billion (Siwek, 2014). The digital game industry has added $6.2 billion to the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (Siwek, 2014). The online gaming market is predicted to grow 1% annual till 2017 (PRNewswire, 2014).
According to Newzoo’s report (2016), 2016 Global Games Market Report: An Overview of Trends & Insights, the total global game revenue has grown to $99.6 billion in 2016. Latin America has seen the fastest growth of game revenues in 2016, with $4.1 billion and 20.1% increase from 2015. Asia-Pacific region however has the largest game revenue with its 46.6 billion in 2016. North America has reported $25.4 billion revenue in games market, while Europe, Middle East, and Africa has $23.5 billion. The top 20 countries have generated $89.4 billion of total game revenues (Newzoo, 2016). Among them, the top three countries are China ($2.4 billion), US ($2.3 billion), and Japan ($1.24 billion). Smaller countries like Taiwan ($987 million, Rank #15), South Korea ($4 billion, Rank #4), and The Netherlands ($521.3 million, Rank #19), and Malaysia ($22.8 million, Rank #18) are also included in the top 20 country list (Newzoo, 2016).
Among several emerging digital game platforms, the mobile game sector is expected to be the fastest growing market and is the major activity of many Internet users (PRNewswire, 2014). In 2016, mobile game market is expected to generate $36.9 (or 37%) of the global digital game revenue (Newzoo, 2016). Social gaming also becomes one of the major online gaming industries (PRNewswire, 2014). When compared with the entire U.S. economic growth of 2.4%, the annual growth of the digital game industry is steadily at 9.7% per year (Siwek, 2014).
Platforms to access digital games range from entertainment screen ($29 billion), computer screen ($31.9 billion), floating screen ($11.6 billion), personal screen ($27.1 billion) (Newzoo, 2016). The global diffusion of various digital gaming platforms has led to the rapid growth of gamer populations around the world (Soper, 2014). In the U.S., female gamers have made up 48% of the gaming population (Grungberg & Hansegard, 2014). Around 711 million gamers use personal computer to play games (James, 2014). In the Asia-Pacific region, it is reported to have the largest number of players (PRNewswire, 2014). Newzoo (2016) estimates gamers in this region is about 1 billion. Digital game revenues in Asia are expected to reach about $20 billion in 2015 (equivalent of 38% of the world market) and $21 billion in 2016 (SuperData Research, 2015). An eight percent annual growth in the digital game industry is forecasted in 2016 (SuperData Research, 2015). In spite of China’s sheer size of population (1.382 billion), Japan is the largest digital game market in Asia, with its annual growth being16% higher than that of China (SuperData Research, 2015), even though its total game revenues rank No. 3 (Newzoo, 2016).