If you’ve been a gamer for a few decades, you’ll know that the industry is almost completely unrecognisable compared to how it faired back in the 1980s, 1990s, or even 2000s.
What we play, how we play, and who we play with are all very different. On top of that, how we buy and how much we pay for games has been radically altered, and the length of time we play many titles has been made longer and longer.
This change is the result of many years of innovation and a lot of ‘trial and error’ as developers and publishers experimented with different ideas in the quest for innovation. The success of their efforts is the significant increase in the size of the gaming industry over the last few decades.
Revenues have grown from around $50 billion in the 1980s to approaching $200 billion today. In recent years, publishers have also been posting record profits.
The success of the gaming industry is a case study we can use in other industries and elsewhere in life, too. Here are some of the top takeaways to take inspiration from.
Embracing Everyone
Early gaming companies focused their efforts on creating content for young men. Although their games weren’t of no interest to women, the marketing campaigns around many of these games certainly went a long way to highlight who these shooting, fighting, and sports titles were targeted at.
The 2000s change this. It began with Nintendo innovating with its DS and Wii consoles, targeting everyone with more general interest titles, a more natural way to interface with them, and a focus on playing together.
This sparked a trend that was seen across the industry, leading to the creation of games like Farmville, Angry Bird, and Candy Crush, all with very wide appeal.
Online casinos soon followed suit, too, creating slot games designed to appeal to different demographics. This led to the creation of some of today’s most popular titles, such as the Egyptian-themed Book of Dead series that follows the lore of adventurer Rich Wilde as he explores Ancient Egyptian tombs and pyramids.
All of these games are gender-neutral, easy to learn, and can be played in short bursts or longer sessions, making them suitable for almost any type of player and widening the potential customer base.
Try Before You Purchase
‘The first one is free’ is a business model that’s been used for centuries by merchants in many industries, even by early gaming companies. The most famous example of this was Doom, a shareware title that actively encouraged players to copy it for their friends to try, but with a payment required to unlock more than just the first level.
However, it was in the late 2000s and early 2010s when the gaming industry perfected its approach.
After trying different methods to monetize games in different ways after facing rising development costs and resistance from players who didn’t want to pay even more for their titles, publishers experimented with ways to charge for games on an ongoing basis.
Eventually, they settled on the free-to-play model, one that lets players download and play games for free but that charges for in-game items and levels for anyone who wants to get more from their time playing.
This has helped to make free games like Fortnite and CS: GO some of the most commercially successful titles ever made, despite not charging upfront.
Becoming Platform Agnostic
Games were often exclusive to a single platform, either because the publisher signed an exclusivity agreement with a console manufacturer, it was too difficult to port the content to other platforms, or a combination of the two.
Today, it’s possible to play most games on every platform. The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X run on the same x86/x64 architecture as Windows, making it easy for developers to make their content work on all three.
The revenue available from selling in-game content on all three also makes it more commercially beneficial to ditch the exclusivity arrangements.
Smartphones have also got in on the action. Although they can’t run AAA titles like Grand Theft Auto V natively, many games like Call of Duty, Fortnite, and Forza have all been ported to mobile platforms.
Conclusion
In all three cases, the gaming industry has used innovation to appeal to and be accessible to a much broader demographic. Through technology, changing business models, and efforts to increase compatibility, they’ve increased the size of the market, helping to create that four-fold increase in revenue.
