Understanding the importance of interactive media is important for any modern company, and this sample paper explores the Vietnamese company Glass Egg. This company develops three-dimensional models and objects for other companies. This sample essay provides an example of how the writing process works at Ultius.

Glass Egg production in Vietnam

The role of interactive media throughout human history has been intense and saturated with a variety of forms, from religious rituals to communal dancing and singing. From cell phones to desktop computers and gaming stations, gamers love to play interactive programs like Pokemon GO, FarmVille, Mario, and others.

It seems at times that humankind does indeed have a need for areas where the input is returned to the participant in the form of output. Yet at no time until the present has the data available to those who crave such ways of interacting reached nearly the height that it has now with the rise and prevalence of video games in the households of developed and now, increasingly, even developing countries.

Video games as an interactive product at Glass Egg

Video games provide a rich density of user experience compared to many other forms of media. As the three-dimensional rendering capabilities of computers and platforms made exclusively for video game use have increased, this experience has only gotten more immersive and thus more desirable to the customer. It is this desirability that makes it worthwhile for companies to specialize in doing nothing but create and render three-dimensional objects, often from bases offshore to the developed regions of the world in order to save costs.

One such company, based in one such area—namely, Vietnam—is Glass Egg. Ultimately, through intra-industry comparison and a thorough analysis of the future of the video game display industry, it becomes obvious that to compete, Glass Egg will need to streamline its processes to lower costs while maintaining the same standards for its product and the same level of ongoing training for its staff that it has used up until now.

Industry analysis of Vietnamese-based Glass Egg

Concerning the area of intra-industry analysis, it can be seen that companies such as Glass Egg take a rather unusual position in the market structure. The nature of the specialty such companies take on only tasks dealing with animation and rendering processes means that they will not receive the direct benefit of the increasing demand for video games.

Rather, the impact will be diluted by the fact that they are a go-to source for other, larger companies, who may regard the fees paid to Glass Egg as merely an annoyance of an expense, much like paying royalties, and thus not view the company as a full, regular business partner in the usual sense of the word.

From the financial analysis in Godes (20), it is obvious that the biggest, most recognizable name on the list easily outweighs any of the smaller companies there, of which Glass Egg is one not listed. Interestingly, whether one looks at market share in December 2001 or November 2005, one comes away with quite a different impression of the four companies’ relative sizes than if one looks at the income from operations.

Glass Egg's main competitors

THQ, Take 2, and Activision are each about half as big as EA but represent a larger part of the market segments. Yet, Take 2 has an income from operations almost as large as that of EA—an income it squanders not inconsiderably in its disproportionate allocation of funds to general and administration, as compared to its competitors. That mistake is one Glass Egg must not make in its own division of resources, and hence the need for streamlining arises if Glass Egg wishes to continue to excel into the future of the video game industry.

In the future, it can be expected that computers will only get faster and the resources available to those creating video games and indeed any form of software-based media will only increase, thus creating a need for companies currently in business, particularly in developing countries, to continue to put resources into the area of training and staff development in order to keep pace with the rate of change of the technological market, which, truly, is an ever-evolving arena.

How Glass Egg stands up to the competition

Fortunately for Glass Egg, it can be said that Glass Egg might even be identified as one of the ideal companies on which other companies might perhaps strive to base their own model. The description of Glass Egg’s role is:

“A theory-grounded analysis of the firm, Glass Egg Digital Media, provides a lens for identifying success factors that enable firms in developing nations to emerge as strategic technology outsourcing partners” (Gallaugher and Stoller 1).

This demonstrates the fact that it is not merely that Glass Egg must develop strong advertising techniques and continue to excel by some outside, objective, hypothetical abstract scoreboard; it is in the eyes of other companies in the video game industry looking to outsource the animation or rendering component of their work to an offshores company that Glass Egg must present a truthful and honest appearance of both efficacy and efficiency.

For example, a look at Godes (24) presents one with a diagram of the organizational structure of Glass Egg as stands. However, it is obvious from a thorough examination of this data that the programming and technical management branches of the flowchart are perhaps redundant. In addition, both being small departments with what appears to be a small staff, motivating team members in two small groups is difficult. Merging the two areas would make communications swifter and more efficient, in addition to reducing the need for the presence of one senior officer, as one such person could oversee both halves at once.

This would also reduce costs in terms of salary, and in the video game business, outgoing funds to sources other than the actual programmers and animators who serve as the bread and butter of what the organization is about can almost be regarded as simply overhead, something to be reduced as much as possible. Thus, there is a simple first step Glass Egg can take to improve itself.

Conclusion

Going forward into the future, competition will likely only get harsher, putting companies like Glass Egg on the edge to need to continue out-competing other companies. This will happen as gradually more and more businesses begin to become aware of the possibilities of outsourcing this brute-force type of work. Only by becoming more streamlined will businesses thrive in the future. To minimize waste is a laudable goal in business as well as in life.

To see the full range of what Glass Egg has to offer, check out their website.   http://www.glassegg.com/