Console Yourself

American teens coming home after school and naturally picking up a gaming controller. Although teens are widely assumed to be gamers, many adults partake in this activity too. Electronic Entertainment Design and Research reported that 43% of Americans own some form of gaming platform, more commonly known as a console. Nearly 70% of Americans play video games each day. This includes a large variety of different platforms of gaming including mobile, console, PC, VR headset, AR, and multiple more options at one's disposal.

This wide variety of play combined with the massively successful streaming service known as Twitch.tv has people not only playing video games but also watching them. Millions of hours and dollars are being put into this industry and it just simply is climbing. But it was not always this complex.

Generation X and Y were born into a world that just began to create video games. As a result, they grew up knowing all the classics like Donkey Kong and Mario from Nintendo. Many do not know that before even the massive company Nintendo was even created it all started back with a game named Computer Space in 1971 by the same people who would later create the well-known Pong in 1972. Computer Space was a very intricate game for its time. The game looks quite simple. You drive spacecraft in a black screen with small black dots and fight against enemy spacecraft. However, really this game was more of a test. The true game to play came out the next year.

Pong, created by Atari, was also an immensely popular game. It is a Tennis-like game in which the two players attempt to get the small ‘ball’ in each other’s goal to score a point. The gaming market has clearly advanced since then. Games like Fortnite have over 250 million accounts, and the majority being adolescence. This amount became so significant that large news organizations like Fox News and CNN were questioning its effects on kids.

"Millions of hours and dollars are being put into this industry and it just simply is climbing. But it was not always this complex."

In the 1970s-1980s, technology was advancing quite quickly but not everyone had access. It was not until Atari had released their console, Atari 2600. In 1977 it became widespread to see video games at home. During this time there were not a lot of competitors but this would not last. Sega and Nintendo were the biggest video game companies running in the 1980s and were making a lot of money. It was a great time for games but that did not come without some problems.

At this time companies like Sony and EA had been created and there were a lot of games being created. However, issues started rising of the content of which would not be suitable for children. Hit titles like Mortal Kombat came under fire when parents became more aware of the mature content in the games their kids were playing. There is the significance behind this because at the time there were no restrictions which meant the developers could have freee reign oveer their contenet.

In 1993, these concerns were brought to congress and they required game developers to either create their own trusted rating system or have the government do it for them. Congress asked, “videogame publishers whether they were, in fact, peddling inappropriate material to children.” Publishers took this incredibly seriously and created ESRB (Electronic Software Review Board).

Because of this board, games were regulated to proper audiences and restricting younger players. This was a massive shift in the gaming industry. Remember, 70% of Americans play video games. This includes an overwhelming number of child-eyes that are now safe to play without risk of mature content. But this did not just happen in the US. There are currently 2.5 billion gamers in the world today. The industry is absolutely massive. It is expected that in 2021 the industry will have grown to $180.1 billion dollars. With an industry like this, it is almost impossible to not have an urge to join it. But how are games today made compared to the likes of Mortal Kombat in 1993?

Well, let’s take the game publisher Call of Duty and break their process down. The Call of Duty franchise has three separate developer teams working on a game that takes, at most, three years to develop. This process happened in 2014 so obviously, things have changed in the coming years, however, with technology continuously advancing and trends shift, games can adapt very quickly. Call of Duty is constantly putting out new games with a $60 entry fee to play. While some other games like Riot Games, League of Legends, are free-to-play. But the biggest difference between Riot games and Treyarch, developers of Call of Duty, is that League of Legends is more than 10 years old yet has the largest community of players worldwide. The free-to-play game has over 119 million players with about 8 million logging on daily. Part of the influence behind the game is the streaming service known as Twitch.tv and the streamers that play it live.

Twitch was purchased by Amazon back in 2014 and was one of the best investments the company has ever made. Twitch produces 15 million daily active users and is not slowing down. However, what makes streamers quit their jobs and go full time streaming is the ad revenue. Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins is one of the highest-paid content creators on all platforms that include gaming. It is said he makes $500,000 a month from streaming on Twitch.

There are two major options with the massive market on twitch, especially for advertisers. Advertise your company and sponsor a streamer. With so many eyes watching, advertisers have been fighting to simply get the most screen time with the most streamers as possible. Along with simple ads, many brands are also starting to sponsor like Xfinity Comcast sponsoring Evil Geniuses, a corporation of some of the top-performing gamers.

If you’re a company looking to improve sales and increase your name in the market, one of the best ways to do so is through these services. At Sonder we highly suggest that companies consider looking into how to utilize this industry for their markets. Right now, Xbox is losing a massive market with their servers being down during probably some of their best playtime.

With Covid-19 taking its toll on the world and schools closing their doors, there are going to be thousands if not millions of Americans with loads of free time on their hands. Microsoft is going be losing a lot of its clients due to the abundance of free time in recent months. Utilize the constantly shifting market and your small company can shift into a thriving corporation.