The game industry's pursuit of happiness, according to Splash Damage

As part of his talk at DICE Europe 2013 today, Splash Damage CEO Paul Wedgwood suggested that our industry puts too much focus on revenue and profits, and that we should be more interested in spreading happiness, both with our players and with our teams. "We think our purpose is making money," he said -- but really money should just be one part of the process. What we should actually be focusing on is making our players, our teams, and ourselves happy through each venture. Wedgwood turned to the works of Aristotle, and in particular his work with rhetoric, to explain how best to achieve happiness through video games. He suggested that the classic arguments for ethos, pathos, and logos can also apply for video game studios. That is, if a game developer feels that what they are working on is credible, they have a passion for it, and that they understand their work and have full control over it, they are much more likely to be happy in their work and, in turn, create great games. The industry veteran suggested that studios should ask themselves three common business questions: Why do we exist, how do we behave, and what do we do? It is through this quest for purpose that an individual or studio can find a sense of credibility, and its passion for creating games that spread happiness. This happiness doesn't have to be transformational, Wedgwood noted -- rather, we should simply be putting a sense of happiness first, no matter how great or small it is. "We're here to create happiness for players and shareholders," he added. Wedgwood's talk was an interesting juxtaposition to that of Wargaming's Victor Kislyi, who had just before discussed his plans for accelerating our industry's revenues.