Gaming Technology And Business IT Begin To MeldGaming Technology And Business IT Begin To Meld

That essentially was Microsoft's point when at the Game Developers Conference it introduced a pre-release version of its XNA Studio tools and debuted the XNA Framework--development tools for its Xbox 360--to help developers who face "escalating game development costs, expanding teams, and ever more complex hardware technologies," as a company press release put it.

Games are 10 times more complicated and costly to produce than they were in 1994, says Geoffrey Selzer, Emergent's CEO. Middleware to better manage developers, dollars, and details can save 20% to 40% in labor costs, he says.

Top game titles can take up to three years to develop and cost up to $25 million--and may still bomb in retail, says Forrester analyst Paul Jackson. "So anything which mitigates risk, reduces turnaround time, and raises quality has to be good," he says.

Such sprawling development projects are where analyst Arrington sees enterprise IT methods having the most impact.

IBM knows something about that. At the Game Developers Conference, the longtime standard-bearer for enterprise computing said that it had reached agreements with several game and animation companies to provide software and services "to help game companies manage their game environment, reduce expenses, increase efficiency, and generate more revenue." IBM has been involved with the game industry for about five years.

Hoplon Infotainment, in Brazil, turned to IBM to provide mainframe-based hosting for its upcoming game TaikoDom. It's also using IBM Rational Software Development Platform to manage the game's development with workflow management, automated code-testing tools, and asset tracking.

Jackson suggests that middleware has migrated from the business world to gaming because the problems faced by online game companies are similar to general E-commerce concerns such as security, real-time transactions, network communication, and database access. "Although many of the able middleware products like physics and graphics engines are unique to games, several others are merely addressing issues similar to business applications," he argues.

Last August, Acacia issued a report that predicted the game middleware industry would triple from $149 million to around $430 million by 2010. The research group suggests that the growth of mobile phones as a gaming platform, along with interactive television and IPTV, will make middleware more appealing to developers as a means to port their games to different environments.

The question is whether games will make companies more productive. Indiana University's Castronova believes they will. "Games get big teams of people to coordinate on things and have a good time on big long-term projects like hunting dragons," he says, adding that game quests, like business projects, require advanced planning and teamwork. "There's this sort of supply chain that happens, and it culminates in a dragon raid. That's a product mentality. That's something that line managers could ultimately use. And that's the way it's going to transform business."

And if it makes work fun, even better.