According to the Oxford Dictionaries video games are refer to a

According to the Oxford Dictionaries, “video games” are refer to a game played by electronically manipulating images produced by a computer program on a monitor or other display. The “micro transaction” are defined as a very small amount financial transaction conducted online.

There are also “virtual item” which mean a good or product traded in the non-physical realm, typically in online communities and games. It has no tangible substance and no real intrinsic value; its value resides solely in what the user is willing to pay for it.

(Investopedia,2012)

2.2 PRIOR RESEARCH

We began our research with a thorough search in the BIBSYS Library Catalogue to find workable sources of information in the articles and books while using the keywords of “video game industry”, “microtransaction”, “Online gaming” , “Esport” and their synonyms and combination. Although there are numberless of articles and websites written about online games and Esports, after we all considerate, we decided to narrow our scope and come out with the keyword “video game industry”, and the result more toward our aim.

This search present us with a strong theoretical background as well as the research gap, thus creating our research question.

Players traditionally buy games in a box of CD from a shop or online. They also can download digital version of games from digital delivery services such as Steam, Ganera, Google Play and Apps Store (Grntzky & Cederholm, 2010). By these way of action, player do not have direct contract with the publishers or the developers of the games. The contact with the customers has been processed by third party companies.

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Player pay to the third party companies, and third party companies take some percentage of the profit as service tax, and the rest will be pay to developers.

In our research we refer the definition of microtransaction from the research paper name as “ The business of microtransaction” done by Kevin Van berlo. Microtransactions in video game terms can be understood as the trading of minor in-game goods and services for a minimal price, often just a handful of ringgit, though the price varies between game titles and the items bought. He also mention facebook mini game did sell in-game currency, which in turn can be used to improve your gameplay experience in various ways. Moreover,in the online shooter like “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive” as known as CS:GO, you can buy a variety of various glove, different pattern of knife and gun skin for you character to don while gunning down other players, and Xbox Live offers you the opportunity to dress up your Xbox Avatar in a host of video game and pop culture themed apparel, all for a small fee.

Information from Newzoo, Esports generated global revenue of roughly $500M in 2016, 70%+ of which coming by way of advertising and sponsorship (by traditional video game companies seeking to grow their audiences and revenues, and by marketers of Consumer Packaged Goods, Food & Beverage, Apparel and Consumer Technology). Global revenue is expected to exceed $1.5B by 2020, according to the BizReport. Players such as KuroKY, Miracle and UNiVeRsE have won around $3 million apiece in tournament winnings alone, but with the rise of eSports as an industry, many players are now getting guaranteed salaries to play on pro teams, like sinatraa. And, because it’s such a personality-driven industry, eSports stars, like pro athletes, often become the draw for fans.

Other than that, in a research paper done by Teo Ottelin called “Twitch and professional gaming: Playing video games as a career” try to prove that steaming while playing video games can get paid by third party companies like youtube or twitch. In his research he did explain clearly about how steaming work and get paid, he also mention some popular steamer like “PewDiePie”. Streaming in Twitch required some application like average 500 concurrent viewers, regular streaming schedule and do not violate T&C. He also mention how streamer get paid. Twitch pays money strictly based on the amount of people that advertisements during the streaming broadcast. (programerhub.com, 2014). Whoever stream for one hour and reached 1000 viewers will get paid 2 usd per hour. Moreover, games can earn money by microtransactions. In League of Legends and Dota 2, players can use their money to buy new characters and costumes for existing characters. In Hearthstone, players can use money to buy new virtual cards for their virtual card deck. These kinds of payments actions are called microtransactions (Giantbomb, 2015)

At the end of this research, we found there are few ways to earn money by selling in-game cosmetics, winning the esport competition and streaming. Winning esport competition is the highest paid compare to streaming and trading in-games items. But in the research, we found that most of the people prefer live streaming because sometimes streamer don’t need to be as professional as an esport player instead streamer just need to be humour and fun. Other than this, there are lesser and lesser situation that parents against their children playing video games, because of this new era, playing video games is one of the best way to earning extra income and have a bright future as well. All the player or gamer should do is to manage their time wisely and coordinately.