The numbers I quoted were total revenue for 2018 from Wikipedia, that’s why I quoted the box office for the past year as well. Dollars flowing through the door of companies in those industries, regardless of what they do. Such numbers tend to include everything from the box office to projection manufacturers to film processing.
Fact of the matter that by any metric the games business is as large as any other major entertainment industry. By the metric of audience size they’re likely to be ahead. It’s not a trick to include hardware. That how you track the economic size of these things.
Books, magazines, radio just has ads, theater really has exhibition. What you’re describing about the film industry is all technically “sales” too. And it’s all normal. There’s nothing especially unique about the games industry.
Meanwhile in film and TV the steaming we’re talking about has become so important because of rapidly shrinking revenue from those other sources. The box office numbers are healthy currently down to a handful of big event movies and interest in Asia, but actual theater attendance has collapsed in the last 30 years. Butts in seats are lacking. In television ad rates and sales have shrunk rapidly as the audience has shifted elsewhere (including to games). And ad rates for web ads are too low to replace that revenue. Subscription and license fees from paid streaming services are much smaller. Such that that online audience can be much, much larger than the traditional one. But still generate less income.
More over film and TV underwent a huge contraction in the 00’s with 10’s of thousands of jobs going away and never coming back. The average worker in the industry is a freelancer making $40kish a year. Mean salary for a network TV writer is just $60k. I went through that particular wringer and that’s why I currently sell beer, despite some TV credits and good connections. I know a guy who went from editing episodes of Person of Interest and national campaign commercials to owning an oyster farm. Because even for him there was and still isn’t any work.
90% of independent films never see a theatrical release even at a single theater. And for those that do the average take is in the $5000 range.
Nothing your really describing to me sounds too much different than any other media business. None of it demonstrates that gaming is small audience. And even zeroing in “indy indy indy” it sounds pretty decent compared to my own experience in production. Cause for the most part you won’t even find an indy production company to work for these days, none the less three in two years. And independent television never really exisited in the first place.
The issues there just aren’t one of scale compared to other media. Just as the problems in the music business aren’t down to lack of audience or revenue streams.
What i meant about that was more that those stints at an indy studio, well paid or not. Tended to lead directly to gainful employment elsewhere, in gaming or not. With far, far, far more regularity than any media business. The default situation of most A/V production staff, and almost all creatives is unemployment with occasional freelance gigs. The only thing like regular employment is corporate communications. Writers and artists of any sort it’s self employment where media jobs (including for games) are a part of the overall hustle.
