• Geek The Game
  • Posts
  • 🎮 Big money in video games, and why every smoothie shop has an app

🎮 Big money in video games, and why every smoothie shop has an app

Author

Alec Charbonneau
February 27, 2024

Summary

Opportunity: Big money in game development.

Level Up: Why every smoothie shop has an app these days.

The Opportunity

Video games are not just for teenage boys. Or even just boys. The gaming market is big. Like really big.

In fact, it’s bigger than the music and movie industries, combined.

Check out some of these crazy stats on the gaming industry:

  • 3.2 billion people play video games. So roughly 40% of Earth’s population.

  • 74% of 18-24 year olds play video games (compare that to 58% that watch TV).

  • Half of the US population plays games on their phone.

You thought gamers are only men? Wrong. 55% of mobile gamers are women.

The video game industry is a huge market with plenty of room for some new legends.

Plays

1. Mobile gaming

The mobile gaming market has historically dominated the industry.

Makes sense, it’s a lot easier to create a mobile app than a more complex PC or console game. And thanks to AI, coding has gotten easier. Which makes complex software even simpler to make than before.

Remember Temple Run from back in 2011? 170 million downloads. Ya that was built by a husband and wife.

2. Emerging markets

There are around 3.2 billion gamers on Earth, and growing. Look to your left, look to your right. At least one of you is on a quest or scoring Candy Crush points.

The highest growth is coming from emerging markets. Specifically the Middle East and Latin America. Makes sense. A younger demographic, and technology, specifically mobile tech, is improving there.

3. AR / VR

Touched on this in a previous newsletter. A lot of VCs are thinking VR will have a big impact on the gaming industry going forward. As an early builder in the VR space you could be finding yourself in a new gold rush. Just make sure you don’t get hit by a car.

4. Social connection

The pandemic created a surge in sales in the gaming industry. Really what it showed is how gaming isn’t just for disconnecting. It actually can have a big role in filling people’s need for connection. In fact, social/casual gaming is seeing the most growth in revenue.

To start

You don’t need a big team or studio to create a viral game. Thanks to AI, coding has gotten easier. So complex software has gotten cheaper to make. And VCs are looking to start investing more in games that previously seemed too expensive to jump on board with.

For some inspiration check out these stories:

Stardew Valley was started by a college grad who wanted to build something to show to employers because he couldn’t get a job. Now the game does like $100M a year.

Similarly, Minecraft was started as a side project by a solo dev.

Even Palworld, aka “Pokemon with guns”, which just hit the market last month and went super viral with 300k users on its

first day. Was started by just 3-4 inexperienced devs before expanding their team later on.

If you were once a gamer and miss the thrill, or if you’re still a gamer and want to make some money. Consider creating some quests of your own.

Game on.

Level Up

Has this moment ever happened to you? You’re at a smoothie shop buying a smoothie. While checking out, the cashier asks, “do you have our app?” And then you wonder to yourself, why the hell do you guys have an app?

Well that happened to me recently, and I decided to uncover why.

To make a long story short, the answer is loyalty. Loyalty is a gold mine for businesses and is why 90% of them have some sort of loyalty program.

If you have a company, or are thinking of starting one, finding loyal customers will be the lifeblood of your business.

There are two key ways loyalty will take your company to the moon.

To see what they are, and how lucrative they are for companies, read the full write-up here.

Bonus Stories