As gamers go mainstream, how will brands and marketers adapt?

Gamers have rather unfairly earned themselves something of a bad rap over the years. More commonly associated with a male audience, tucked away in parents’ basements, the industry hasn’t always had the most glamorous image, despite the fact that analysts expect it to be worth $272 billion by 2030.

However, with the pandemic inadvertently having driven an explosion both in gaming and online video consumption, and with these trends looking set to continue in 2022, the rapid consumerization of the space is not an opportunity to be ignored.

According to our own research from late last year, more than half of consumers in the UK (52%) spent between 30 minutes to three hours watching short online video content every day. But beyond growth, it’s the convergence between the two audiences which should be of most interest to marketers.

Gaming companies are providing massive multiplayer online environments, which digital publishers like TheSoul Publishing are producing more and more content for. For example, there are concerts happening in Fortnite and new virtual artists being created and launched in Avakin Life.

Why now?

So the question then is, why is this overlap happening now? The simplest answer is that a digital-first approach to content consumption underlines engagement habits for most of us, whatever our preferred hobby or entertainment preferences. Broadcast has become Netflix, staying in touch has become social media, and gaming has become intertwined into both. So while we might use the digital world for different purposes, we’re all existing in the same space. This was made apparent in 2019 when Netflix said its greatest competitor was Fortnite. The competition isn’t just choosing between Playstation and Xbox. It’s about where you’re prepared to commit your time.

Unsurprisingly then, this change in habits has in turn driven an increase in the number of partnerships between creators (or digital publishers) and gaming companies. Publishers and developers are exploring more TV tie-ins (and vice versa) such as Scopely with Wheel of Fortune: Free Play, or JamCity with its Family Feud tie-in to Cookie Jam. Both went beyond the historical co-branding/licensing opportunities and focused on more of a dedicated user experience.

As time has passed, partnerships have also begun to go beyond an actual product or brand and have even started to include gaming personalities. In the recent film Free Guy, high-profile gaming streamers, Jacksepticeye, Ninja, Pokimane, DanTDM, and LazarBeam all appear as themselves in the film providing “commentary” as part of the film’s storyline. This crossover highlights the changing tastes of a traditional movie-going audience, and the power influencers or personalities have in drawing a wider pool of demographics.

Removing Chinese walls

From a brand perspective, there is little to be gained by inserting barriers between audiences within marketing strategies. Consumers are ever shifting across platforms, as we’ve seen from the rise and fall of social media channels over the last decade. Success comes from allowing the user to engage and interact with content wherever they want to. At TheSoul Publishing, we’re not just on YouTube. We’re on Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Tik Tok as well as our own websites and applications. Once you’ve inspired a user to love what you do, it makes sense to present your content to them in as many ways as possible.

Based on our own experience at TheSoul Publishing, we’ve experimented in this new hybrid audience space, launching several videos in Avakin Life (a 3D open world with 200 million-plus downloads on mobile).

It’s helping us to understand how to maximize added value for our fans because we can now see that the viewership rate and duration of viewing of our videos inside the game were comparable to what we see on YouTube. Importantly, it shows us that users are willing to stay in-game while consuming different media.

The opportunity is there for the taking

This blurring of lines is an exciting one, because it offers new opportunities to innovate and grow audiences, for brands and publishers alike. We predict an ever-increasing rate of experimentation in this space, as the industry adjusts to this new expectation from audiences. We’re not going to be taking our eyes off the screen anytime soon. As a result, in-game content consumption is here to stay and therefore the opportunities for cross audience pollination and media consumption are huge.