Digimon, short for "Digital Monsters", is a Japanese media franchise, which encompasses virtual pet toys, anime, manga, video games, films, and a trading card game. The franchise focuses on the eponymous creatures that inhabit a "Digital World", which is a parallel universe that originated from Earth's various communication networks.
Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one of the largest third-party video game publishers in the world and was the top United States publisher in 2016.
Sierra Entertainment, Inc. was an American video game developer and publisher founded in 1979 by Ken and Roberta Williams. The company is known for pioneering the graphic adventure game genre, including the first such game, Mystery House. It is known for its graphical adventure game series King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Gabriel Knight, Leisure Suit Larry, and Quest for Glory, and as the original publisher of Valve's Half-Life series.
A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that have been developed either internally by the publisher or externally by a video game developer.
Wizardry is a series of role-playing video games, developed by Sir-Tech, that were highly influential in the evolution of modern role-playing video games. The original Wizardry was a significant influence on early console role-playing games such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. Originally made for the Apple II, the games were later ported to other platforms. The last game in the original series by Sir-Tech was Wizardry 8, released in 2001. There have since been various spin-off titles developed for the Japanese market.
.hack is a series of single-player action role-playing video games developed for the PlayStation 2 console by CyberConnect2 and published by Bandai. The four games, .hack//Infection, .hack//Mutation, .hack//Outbreak, and .hack//Quarantine, all feature a "game within a game", a fictional massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) called The World which does not require the player to connect to the Internet. Players may transfer their characters and data between games in the series. Each game comes with an extra DVD containing an episode of .hack//Liminality, the accompanying original video animation (OVA) series which details fictional events that occur concurrently with the games.
Jaleco Ltd. was a corporate brand name that was used by two previously connected video game developers and publishers based in Japan. The original Jaleco company was founded in 1974 as Japan Leisure Company, founded by Yoshiaki Kanazawa, before being renamed to simply Jaleco in the early 1980s. This company was later acquired in 2000 by PCCW, who rebranded it as their Japanese game division, PCCW Japan, before reverting it to Jaleco in 2002. In 2006, Jaleco became independent from PCCW and renamed to Jaleco Holding, having their video game operations spun off into a new company, also called Jaleco. This new spin-off company was sold to mobile developer Game Yarou in 2009, with Jaleco Holding renaming itself to Encom Holdings shortly after.
The video game industry is the tertiary and quaternary sectors of the entertainment industry that specialize in the development, marketing, distribution, monetization and consumer feedback of video games. The industry encompasses dozens of job disciplines and thousands of jobs worldwide.
Video game development is the process of creating a video game. It is a multidisciplinary practice, involving programming, design, art, audio, user interface, and writing. Each of those may be made up of more specialized skills; art includes 3D modeling of objects, character modeling, animation, visual effects, and so on. Development is supported by project management, production, and quality assurance. Teams can be many hundreds of people, a small group, or even a single person.
Infantry, also known as Infantry Online, is a multiplayer combat video game. Originally released in 1999, the game was taken offline by Sony Online Entertainment and the servers shut down in March 2012. The Infantry community subsequently took control of the game and re-launched it independently at freeinfantry.com.
Digital Chocolate, Inc. was a video game developer and publisher headquartered in San Mateo, California. It was founded in 2003 by Trip Hawkins, the founder of video game companies Electronic Arts and The 3DO Company. The company focused on developing games for Java ME-based mobile phones, iOS, and Microsoft Windows, and made some non-entertainment titles. Its marketing motto was Seize the minute.
Sega AM Research & Development No. 3, known as Hitmaker Co., Ltd. from 2000 to 2004, is a defunct division of Sega, a Japanese video game company. Established by 1993, AM3 was managed by Hisao Oguchi and developed a number of arcade games for Sega. Series introduced by AM3 include Virtual On, Sega Rally, Crazy Taxi, and Virtua Tennis. AM3's main focus was on arcade games until the release of the Dreamcast. Additionally, developers Tetsuya Mizuguchi and Kenji Sasaki developed Sega Rally Championship with AM3 before departing to form AM Annex, which later split into Sega AM9 and Sega AM5.
Kemco is a Japanese video game developer and publisher established in 1984. It is headquartered in Kure, Hiroshima.
Titus Interactive SA, known as Titus France SA until March 1999, was a French software publisher that produced and published video games for various platforms. Its head office was located in Parc de l'Esplanade in Lagny sur Marne in Greater Paris. At one time, it was instead located in Montfermeil, also in Greater Paris.
Rocket Science Games was a video game developer and publisher that created games for consoles and personal computers from 1993 to 1997. The company released Loadstar: The Legend of Tully Bodine, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs: The Second Cataclysm, Wing Nuts: Battle in the Sky, Rocket Jockey, and Obsidian. The Space Bar was the final game developed by Rocket Science. After the company folded, it was published by SegaSoft. Six additional games were never completed.
In-game advertising (IGA) is advertising in electronic games. IGA differs from advergames, which refers to games specifically made to advertise a product. The IGA industry is large and growing.
In South Korea, video games are considered to be a major social activity, with most of the games being cooperative or competitive. Locally developed role-playing, first-person shooter, MMORPG and mobile games have proven to be very popular in the country. Professional competition surrounding video games also enjoy a substantial following in South Korea—major tournaments are often broadcast on television and have large prizes available.
Cosmic Break is a free to play 3D MMO third-person shooter with big robots and colorful, explosive battles in an anime style. The game was developed and published by the Japanese company CyberStep, Inc. and was officially released in several countries. As is the case with GetAmped2, Cosmic Break also has various NPCs and playable characters voiced by famous Japanese voice-over artists. Among these are Rie Tanaka, Akio Ōtsuka (Draken), Takeshi Kusao (Lios), Asami Shimoda, Atsuko Tanaka and Daisuke Sakaguchi.
Video games are a rapidly growing industry in Thailand, with an average growth rate of 15% per year since 2017. In 2021, the Thai games market generated over a billion dollars, making it one of the highest-profile games markets in Southeast Asia. The number of gamers in Thailand has reached 32 million according to a report by Newzoo, an international games and esports analytics and market research group. And in 2022, Thailand was ranked among the top Southeast Asian video-game markets, with a revenue of US$1.24 billion that is forecasted to reach $1.4 billion in the same year.
Cygames, Inc. is a Japanese video game development studio established in 2011 by CyberAgent. Mobile and e-commerce company DeNA acquired a 24% stake in the studio in 2012, and Nintendo acquired another 5% stake in 2018, leaving CyberAgent with 69% of the shares and as such, they are the parent company of Cygames. From its formation, the company produced mobile games, initially on the Mobage platform, and from 2013 on Android and iOS. The company headquarters is located in Tokyo while other divisions are located in Osaka and Saga in Japan and Seoul, South Korea.
