With the 2020 series of events, many of us have started to look for other ways to pass our time. Some have looked towards Netflix and Disney+. A number, baking (even ice cream making; thank you to everyone who got an ice cream machine before me). And others, gaming. The number of friends, who had no track record of gaming and suddenly started talking about how to farm iron nuggets in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, skyrocketed. Anecdotally, more than 3-4 fold more.
Games = social networks
Games have become the new social networks. I’m not even talking about the gaming subreddits on Reddit or the Discord channels out there. And much like how social networks are communal hubs of interaction, games, like:
- Battle royales (BRs), like Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG)
- Massively-multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), like World of Warcraft and The Elder Scrolls Online
- Role-playing games (RPGs), like The Last of Us 2 and Ghost of Tsushima,
- Multiplayer online battle arenas (MOBAs), like League of Legends and Dota 2,
- first-person shooters (FPS), like Call of Duty and Overwatch,
- And other free-to-play games (F2P), whose revenues accounted 80% of the digital games market in 2019…
…*deep breath* just to name a few, offer just as much, if not more. People spend hours indulging on the platform and interacting with friends. Not only that, because content is native to gaming platforms themselves, it makes it easier for friends to connect and share content on progress and goals. Much like groups and communities on social networks, many games have clan systems that increase retention and engagement on the platform. Games are just sticky.
By the numbers
They aren’t discrete “one-off” purchases, like my old Nintendo 64 cartridge games, but evolving engines of narrative and relief, or as Andreessen Horowitz calls them – living franchises. What started as “one-off” buys became downloadable contents post-launch (DLCs). And looking at games like World of Warcraft, Fortnite, with constant monthly updates, patches and hotfixes, the games you buy “in the box” are no longer the same beast as before. And now we have a term for it all – Games-as-a-Service (GaaS).
In 2019, there were over 2.5 billion gamers in the world. That’s about 1 gamer out of every 3 people in the world. Together, they spent $120.1 billion on games and grew the market 3%, in a study by SuperData. And you know even Neilsen wants a slice of the pie when they acquired SuperData in 2018, a research company dedicated to tracking the game and e-sports markets. No surprise, Neilsen’s not alone. 44.2% of Tencent’s investments have been into gaming – owning 100% of Riot Games (League of Legends), 40% of Epic Games (Fortnite), 81.4% of Supercell (Clash of Clans), 10% of Bluehole (PUBG), and even 1.3% of Roblox and 2% of Discord. Sony, Microsoft, Apple, and many others are no stranger to putting their dollar into gaming as well.
Though many in 2019 weren’t bullish on the 2020’s growth numbers, in hindsight, we’re seeing a whole different wave of optimism. Hell, March 2020 was a real winner for gamers, spending $1.6 billion on games, their hardware, software, accessories and game cards, thanks for COVID. Needless to say, Animal Crossing topped the charts. I can’t imagine the number at the end of 2020.
Social athletes
You also have Twitch streamers, YouTubers, mods, and creators who become the local/global authority on the market and often ubiquitous with the games/genres they play. Who can actively and passively sway how a community thinks and acts, just like big-time influencers on social media. They have effectively become, what I call, social athletes, turning their hobby into a full-time pursuit. And earning paychecks by representing the brand/team they love most, as well as through sponsorships and partnerships. Shroud, a former competitive e-sports athlete, now one of the biggest streamers in the industry and formerly exclusively streaming on Microsoft’s Mixer, took a 1.5 month break after the Microsoft shut down its Twitch competitor, Mixer. And on his first day back recently, he had half a million viewers tuning in to watch his revival on Twitch.
The next frontier
Just like how social networks evolved into ad-based revenue models, games are evolving into a similar beast, as well. Mobile games have been no stranger to advertisements for a long time. But we’re now seeing the change now on PC and console games. And in a slightly different nature. Where the ads are embedded into the game experience itself, rather than the pop-out kinds.
Epic Games’ Fortnite definitely took it all to the next level – from their live, in-game events to their virtual cosmetic options that acted as film promotions. The latter, much like, how LEGO releases a whole series of movie-related sets to help with promoting it. And their live events are no joke, whether it was:
- Their live Marshmello concert (with 11 million attending live),
- Their Marvel crossover event where players could play as Thanos,
- Or, when 3.1 million players got a sneak peek into a never-before-seen scene in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker before it came to theaters.
As expected, many other games are following suit. Recently popular PC game, Fall Guys, is now hosting a “battle of the brands” on their Twitter – a bidding war to have your brand featured as a cosmetic in the game towards a good cause of donating to Special Effect, a charity dedicated to helping gamers with physical disabilities.
So, what’s next?
Well, it’s an exciting time. Not too long ago, influencer marketing blew up. And now brands/games are becoming influencers in and of themselves. Whether that fall under influencer marketing or a new bucket, I don’t know. What I do know is that though we are all far apart right now, the world of media is bringing the larger world closer together. As more games:
- Go cross-platform,
- Are discovered organically and socially,
- And are fueled and accelerated alongside co-creaters, influencers and user-generated content…
… while technologies, like 5G, virtual and augmented/mixed reality (VR/AR/XR), cloud gaming, and blockchain, bring more interactions into each game, building larger and immersive worlds, I’m quite bullish on the growth of the gaming industry. And as the gaming industry evolves, their learnings will bleed into other industries, via gamified models – from Pioneer gamifying the process of building a business to Superhuman gamifying productivity, first through emails.
Why? They’re sticky – high engagement and retention cohorts. And I dare say, sexy, as well. Frankly, game companies don’t just launch with minimum viable products (MVP), but minimum viable happiness (MVH). Or as Jiaona Zhang, VP Product at Webflow and lecturer at Stanford’s School of Management Science & Engineering, calls it: minimum lovable products (MLP).
If you’re interested in a deep dive on how to offer MVH or build an MLP, check out my previous post on the topic:
Photo by Florian Olivo on Unsplash
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