Video game

How Community-Based Video Games Came To Dominate The Market – Forbes


Growing up, did you ever play the video game
Street Fighter
? As a kid, I remember being mesmerized by players down at my local arcade who were dominant at the game. I
n today’s world, the biggest games are designed to support communities of gamers. Millions of people watch skilled players on Twitch, and esports has become a multibillion-dollar industry.

Over the years, there has been an enormous community-minded shift in gaming, but first, let’s briefly recap where communal video gaming started.

The Walls Came Down

We’re not going all the way back to Pac-Man here, but up until about a decade ago, video games were primarily single-player — or limited four-player — experiences. It wasn’t until broadband internet became more widely available that the focus shifted to can expansive multiplayer entertainment.

Once gamers were able to knock down the walls and connect with others from down the street (or even across the world), new and exciting vistas came into view. 

Fortnite Takes Over The World

By now, even if you’ve never played video games before, you’ve heard of FortniteThe title from Epic Games banked $2.4 billion in digital, in-game revenue in 2018, the most by any game in history. Keep in mind the fact that gamers can play the battle royale mode of Fortnite for free.

How does a free game generate over $2 billion in revenue in one year? Epic created a game that empowered the individual. Not only can you play with tons of your friends, but you can also customize your character however you want. That’s where the in-game revenue comes from — costumes, hairstyles and dance moves you can buy.

It’s also a game that crosses the age gap. Older siblings play with younger siblings, moms and dads play with their kids — heck, even grandparents play Fortnite, albeit in fewer numbers.

Minecraft For All Ages

Not every kid is old enough to play Fortnite, but nearly every kid can play Minecraft. It’s like an online Lego world where you can build anything you want out of blocks — from Middle Earth to the Shaolin monastery in China.

Minecraft is unique in that way. It can be either a multiplayer experience or an immersive single-player journey. That’s why Minecraft has attracted 91 million worldwide players and why Microsoft bought the company that makes the game, Mojang, in 2014 for $2.5 billion — its community is strong.

How strong? A YouTuber called Stampylonghead (real name Joseph Garret) who makes Minecraft videos has over 9 million subscribers. Joseph’s net worth is now $14 million thanks to those subscribers. 

Twitch Lets Us Watch Superstars

Speaking of watching people play video games, Twitch, a streaming platform, has 140 million monthly unique viewers and 15 million daily users.

When Amazon paid $970 million for Twitch back in 2017, it raised several eyebrows, including mine, but Amazon obviously saw this future coming. Today, millions of Twitch viewers pay to subscribe to channels so they can watch and interact with their favorite gamers as they play Fortnite, Overwatch and more. It’s no different than sports fans paying for a cable package to watch their favorite team. Many Twitch users tune in to watch the professionals so they can learn how to improve their own game. It’s like young athletes watching game tape of the pros.

There’s also the awe-inspiring factor I mentioned earlier when talking about Street Fighter. I thought the dudes at the arcade were world-class simply because they were better than me at the game. Now, we all get to watch superstars like Ninja (real name Tyler Blevins, with a net worth north of $10 million) who truly are world-class players.

Esports Are Must-See TV

Think about the Super Bowl, where thousands of fans gather to watch the world’s best NFL teams duke it out for supremacy. That’s the level esports has reached. It’s estimated that by 2021, 557 million will watch some sort of esports event. The 2019 Super Bowl, by comparison, drew 100.7 million viewers across all platforms.

The most watched esports titles are community-minded games like League of Legends and Overwatch, but the appeal of esports taps into something else — fandom. People love to identify with and root for their favorite teams, then share that fandom with others. Esports isn’t some flash in the pan, either. There’s serious momentum gathering for esports to be added to the Olympics in time for the 2024 games in Paris.

The Lesson For All Of Us

There’s one big takeaway here. If community can do all of this for an industry as huge as gaming, what can it do for your business?

1. Be where your customers are.

When Lululemon started, they talked to people in yoga studios. While this seems obvious, the bigger a company gets, the more distant it tends to become.

2. Collaborate with your customers.

Whether it’s a forum or Facebook group, you want to create an ongoing dialogue with your community. But to do that, you have to know where they hang out.

3. Allow the community to have an impact.

Harley-Davidson knows its customers can help build its brand. They have the Harley Owners Group where 325,000 Harley owners help each other with bike issues. 

4. Give out badges or rewards.

Video games do a masterful job rewarding players the longer they play. In Fortnite, you can earn a banana suit and play in it. How can you reward customer loyalty?

5. Have a seamless user experience.

Fire up your favorite console or video game, and not only is the interface seamless and intuitive — it’s consistent. Your customers expect the same experience from you.

6. Unite customers around a common interest.

Gamers are united around defeating the bad guys (or each other). SoulCycle gives us a blueprint for replicating this by uniting riders around a shared (sweaty) experience.

Get Started With Your Community

If you’re a publisher or a console provider and you’re not thinking about community based-games or how to connect communities, you’re going to be left behind. And even if you’re not entrenched in the gaming industry, there are many lessons to learn here. Now it’s time to apply them.



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