Gaming and Gaming Adjacent Industry Trends
The gaming vertical is incredibly rich and diverse, spanning game studios, publishers, technology and infrastructure providers, and many other adjacencies including training, esports, betting, player networks, matchmaking, etc. Our core themes are as follows:
● Social Games Without Game-Like Objectives: We believe that the most popular gaming experiences today are focused not on game-like objectives such as “win”, “shoot”, “kill”, “score” or “defeat”, but on non-game-like ones such as “share”, “create”, “express”, “build”, “identify”. Among the best-selling games on Nintendo Switch, Animal Crossing New Horizons has sold more units (31 million) than The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (21 million) or Super Mario Odyssey (20 million). Among Us, a social deduction game, had 500 million active players in November 2020, even though its developer, Innersloth, has a small team of employees.
● Multiplayer Games: We believe that these titles benefit from powerful network effects that drive player stickiness, spending, and engagement time. In success, a multiplayer game can reach tens of millions of players per month for years and generate a series of spinoffs.
● Multiplayer gaming technology and infrastructure: As multiplayer and social games become more global, cross-platform, capable, important and lucrative, we believe the technologies required to support them will become more critical, differentiated and valuable.
● Games with Rich User Economies: We anticipate that titles will continue to benefit from virtual economies, marketplaces, and user-generated content toolsets. We believe that, even with smaller user bases, games with rich user economies can be highly profitable and grow both quickly and enormously.
● Cross-Platforms Tools: Engines, toolsets, and other technologies that allow for amateur or independent developers to more easily, efficiently, and profitably create games.
● Cloud Gaming: Game delivery technologies, from arcade to PC, console, mobile, and AR have unlocked billions of dollars in new user-spend and created brand new studios, publishers, intellectual property and supporting technology companies. NewZoo estimates that cloud gaming market revenue will rise from $585 million in 2020 to $4.8 billion by 2023.
● Video Game Broadcasting: The live streaming of video game related content has gained significant traction in recent years, growing exponentially due to platforms such as Twitch (Amazon) and YouTube (Google). According to Streamlabs, nearly 7.5 billion hours of streamed gaming content was watched globally in Q3 ‘20 alone, representing growth of 91.8%, year over year. We anticipate that this will lead to brand new experiences, brands, and companies.
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