Once dismissed as child’s play, gaming today is big business on a global scale. In 2024, the video game market generated about $224 billion in revenue, already larger than the combined global movie and music industries. Analysts project steady growth of around 5% to 8% annually, with some estimates expecting the industry to approach $300 billion by 2029. In fact, Deloitte predicts an even more dramatic trajectory, stating that the sector could be worth $485 billion by 2028. This explosive growth has elevated gaming from a subculture to a central pillar of the entertainment economy, outpacing other media segments and catching the attention of investors worldwide.
What’s driving this surge? For one, gaming has penetrated every corner of the globe and every demographic. From consoles like Xbox and PlayStation to mobile games on billions of smartphones, gaming is now a mainstream pastime for more than three billion people, by some counts.
It’s not just about kids in arcades anymore. It has evolved into a massive audience spanning all ages, eagerly spending time and money on interactive entertainment. Major tech and media companies have taken note, with Netflix now offering games alongside films, and Meta (Facebook’s parent) heavily investing in virtual reality gaming experiences. Gaming isn’t merely entertainment anymore; it represents a data-driven, innovation-hungry industry that closely resembles the tech sector.
Leading game publishers operate like Silicon Valley firms, leveraging user data, analytics, and agile development to keep players hooked and revenues rising. In short, video games have become a global economic powerhouse, reshaping how we think about media, culture, and money.
Innovative monetisation models
In the past, selling a video game was a simple transaction, where a customer bought a game once, and that was it. Today, that one-time purchase model is almost quaint. Modern games are designed to generate continuous revenue streams long after the initial download. How does this happen?
It’s achieved through innovative monetisation models that keep players coming back, and keep the cash flowing. Free-to-play games have led the charge, with titles like Fortnite, League of Legends, and Candy Crush allowing anyone to start playing for free, then earn money by selling enticing extras. These “extras” can be purely cosmetic items like character skins and outfits or functional enhancements like new levels, characters, or power-ups. In 2018 and 2019 alone, Fortnite, free to download, generated over $9 billion in revenue from such in-game purchases.
Players willingly pay for digital goods that personalise their experience or give them bragging rights, and those small purchases by millions of people add up fast. Namely, China’s blockbuster mobile game Honor of Kings grossed an estimated $2.6 billion in 2024, largely from in-app microtransactions.
Another lucrative model is the “games as a service” approach, which often uses subscriptions or season passes. Console and PC games increasingly offer monthly memberships or “battle passes” that unlock exclusive content over time. This provides a steady, recurring income.
Even platforms themselves have subscription services. Big tech companies like Microsoft’s Game Pass and Sony’s PlayStation Plus give players access to a library of games for a monthly fee, blending the Netflix model with gaming. Advertising is yet another revenue stream, as many free mobile games show video ads or banner ads, earning pennies per view that translate into substantial revenue at scale. In 2024, brands spent over $32 billion on in-game advertising, a figure that is projected to rise to nearly 38% of all game industry revenue by 2029 as marketers chase the massive, engaged gaming audience.
Crucially, these monetisation methods are designed to enhance or at least not disrupt the player’s enjoyment. Game companies tread carefully because they want to boost revenue without alienating players. The most successful games strike a balance, offering optional purchases or ads that feel like part of the fun. When executed well, players actually appreciate new content and features, and they reward studios with loyalty (and dollars).
By continually updating games with fresh content such as new levels, events, items, and rewards, publishers keep players engaged for years, not just the week after launch. Consequently, this leads to recurrent income that can far exceed the old single-sale model.
A hit game today can essentially become a platform for ongoing monetisation. Little wonder that investors and financial strategists are now deeply involved in game development decisions, ensuring monetisation is baked into game design from the start.
Where play meets profit
Video games have given rise to vibrant virtual economies that increasingly mirror real-world markets. Players buy, sell, and trade digital assets in many popular games, which can often be referred to as the “goods” of a game’s economy. These might include cosmetic items for avatars, special weapons or gear, collectable cards, virtual real estate, or even entire characters.
What’s remarkable is that players often spend real money to obtain these virtual goods, even though the items have no tangible existence outside the game. The appeal lies in what they do for players. For instance, a rare skin might confer status, a powerful item might improve gameplay, or a custom decoration might allow someone to express their identity. In effect, games have created closed-loop economies where virtual currencies and items hold significant perceived value.
For game companies, this represents a financial goldmine. Virtual item sales have become a major revenue source, often eclipsing the upfront price of the game itself. A player might spend $0 to download a mobile game, then willingly spend $10, $100, or more over time on bonus packs or premium currency to enhance their experience.
This model has blurred the line between gaming and traditional commerce. Players are now both consumers and participants in these digital marketplaces. In titles such as Roblox or EVE Online, entire virtual economies flourish. Players can create goods or content and sell them to others for in-game currency, which in some cases can be exchanged back into real money. Some enterprising gamers treat these ventures like small businesses, earning real income by trading in-game commodities.
Occasionally, the virtual economy intersects with reality in jaw-dropping ways. For example, in early 2023, a single digital weapon skin known as a decorative AK-47 rifle skin in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was sold to a collector for $400,000 in real money. And that wasn’t even the highest. There have been unconfirmed trades of rare game items valued at over $500,000.
In another example, the esports scene for Dota 2 saw its championship prize pool reach $40 million in 2021, funded entirely by players purchasing in-game content. These cases highlight how much value people now place on digital assets. What was once just pixels on a screen can now carry a price tag rivalling a luxury car or a house.
Game developers have nurtured these economies by introducing virtual currencies that players use as intermediate money. For instance, buy 1,000 gems for $10, then spend those gems on items. This indirection helps soften the sense of spending real cash and keeps money circulating within the game ecosystem.
The strategy has paid off handsomely. By 2022, 95% of all game sales revenue was digital rather than physical, reflecting the dominance of in-app purchases and downloads over boxed games. Economists and financial researchers are paying close attention to these virtual markets. Some view them as prototypes for future digital economies, where virtual goods, community-driven value, and creative monetisation could influence real-world business.
NFTs and the metaverse
Beyond the contained economies of individual games, new technologies are pushing the concept of virtual assets even further. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and the vision of a broader metaverse have become buzzwords in gaming and finance. In games, NFTs offer a way to give players true ownership of a unique digital item that isn’t confined to a single game’s servers.
An NFT might be a one-of-a-kind sword, a rare character skin, or a plot of virtual land, secured on a blockchain so that players can buy, sell, or trade it outside the game environment. The promise is that a rare digital item could hold value similarly to a physical collectable, with provable scarcity and ownership.
Some early games built around NFTs, like Axie Infinity and Gods Unchained, showed that players would invest significant money for the chance to earn or own valuable in-game NFTs. At one point, Axie Infinity players in developing countries were making a living income through play-to-earn mechanics, though that boom has since tempered.
The metaverse takes the idea of game economies and stretches it to a sprawling virtual universe that blends gaming, social media, and commerce. It’s an immersive online space where people might work, play, socialise, and shop, all using digital avatars. Although the full metaverse concept is still emerging, gaming platforms are already establishing the foundation.
Roblox, Fortnite, and Decentraland host virtual events and marketplaces where brands sell digital merchandise and artists perform concerts for millions of virtual attendees. Tech giants are investing heavily. For example, Facebook rebranded as Meta and has poured billions into VR and AR (augmented reality) technology to stake its claim in the metaverse.
The economic potential is immense. According to Statista, the metaverse market, which includes VR/AR hardware, software, digital goods, and more, could reach $490 billion by 2030. This conservative estimate identifies e-commerce and gaming as the primary revenue drivers, with gaming-related metaverse revenue expected to rise from approximately $10 billion today to $163 billion in 2030.
Projected metaverse revenues by 2030 highlight the dominant roles of gaming and e-commerce in a $490-plus billion virtual economy. Already, dozens of companies are racing to build these new virtual worlds or provide the tools for them.
Aside from Meta and major game studios like Epic Games (creator of Fortnite), there are crypto-native platforms such as The Sandbox and Decentraland that sell virtual land as NFTs. Luxury fashion brands have designed virtual clothing for avatars, and real estate in prime virtual locations has sold for millions of dollars.
Sceptics note that the metaverse hype may be ahead of reality, since user numbers in some blockchain-based worlds are still very modest. However, the convergence of gaming, virtual economies, and blockchain is undeniably shifting paradigms. This points to a future in which digital assets and experiences hold economic significance comparable to physical ones. Regulators and economists are paying close attention to how these trends develop, especially as questions surrounding asset ownership, intellectual property, and taxation of virtual earnings become increasingly important.
Wall Street meets gaming
As gaming has become an economic juggernaut, traditional finance is inventing ways to ride the wave. One response has been the creation of gaming-focused financial products like specialised exchange-traded funds (ETFs). These are investment funds that bundle together dozens of gaming-related stocks, such as game publishers, console manufacturers, esports companies, and others, into one tradable package. The VanEck Video Gaming and eSports ETF (ticker: ESPO) offers investors a wide range of exposure to the gaming industry.
Rather than betting on a single gaming company, one can invest in the sector’s overall growth through such ETFs. This reflects the recognition that gaming is now a serious investment theme. Other funds like Global X’s Video Games & Esports ETF, known as HERO, have also launched, and major investment firms track gaming indices.
The appeal to investors is clear. Gaming has a youthful, global customer base and multiple avenues of revenue—software, hardware, mobile, VR, and more—making it an attractive long-term growth story. Even casual investors are hopping on, since, unlike picking individual stocks, ETFs are accessible and relatively easy to understand, so they have lowered the barrier for putting money into the gaming boom.
Perhaps even more interesting is how gaming has infiltrated the world of fintech and personal finance. Banks, trading apps, and fintech startups have discovered that applying game-like elements can make finance more engaging for a new generation of users.
This trend is broadly called gamification, which involves adding rewards, competition, and playful design to non-game activities. Stock-trading apps like Robinhood famously used animations like confetti and achievement badges to celebrate users making trades, mimicking the positive feedback loops of video games. Robinhood eventually toned this down after criticism, but the influence was unmistakable.
Many investing platforms now have quizzes, progress bars, or even paper-trading games that let users practice trading without real money. The idea is to reduce intimidation and educate new investors by tapping into the motivational tricks of games. Even serious banks have added features like point systems or challenges such as “save $100 this month to earn a badge!” to their mobile apps.
This gamification of finance appears to work. Tasks that might seem tedious, such as budgeting, investing, and learning financial concepts, become more fun and interactive when framed as a game. One finance executive noted that adding game mechanics boosted customer engagement dramatically on their app; users would log in more frequently and invest more regularly when they had streaks to maintain or levels to rise.
Beyond stock trading, fintech apps for budgeting, credit scores, insurance, and retirement savings are adopting these techniques. Some savings apps even give users virtual rewards for meeting goals, and credit score apps use progress metres and celebratory graphics when your score improves. The gamification trend extends to health insurance with wellness challenges, education through learning apps with points and leaderboards, and workplace productivity tools, all borrowing from what video games have perfected about engaging users.
Importantly, gamification isn’t confined to finance. Across industries, companies are leveraging game mechanics to drive customer behaviour and loyalty. Retail and e-commerce apps frequently incorporate mini-games or daily rewards. China’s e-commerce giant Temu and its rivals are known for offering in-app games that reward users with coupons or credit. Food delivery services might have challenges, such as “order 5 times this month for a bonus!” Fitness apps turn exercise into a game with badges for milestones and social competitions for steps taken.
By 2025, the global gamification market, which refers to the business of software and services that help companies gamify experiences, is projected to reach $30 billion, up from just $9 billion in 2020. In fact, a Gartner report found that over 70% of Global 2000 companies have implemented gamification in some form. The rationale is simple: engagement. In an age of short attention spans, techniques honed in video games are gold for keeping users interested and active.
The future is playable
In little more than a decade, gaming’s reputation has transformed from a frivolous pastime to a formidable economic force. The innovations born in the gaming world, such as virtual currencies, digital goods, live-stream engagement, and gamified apps, are now reshaping finance and business strategies at large.
Gaming has taught industries how to engage users and monetise digital experiences through creativity and interactivity. It has been shown that people will invest real value in virtual experiences, whether buying a skin for their character or spending hours honing skills to compete online.
For gamers themselves, the lines between playing for fun, earning a living, and investing have blurred. A teenager streaming gameplay from their bedroom might be building a lucrative personal brand. A clan of gamers spending real money on virtual real estate might see it as a serious investment in the next digital frontier. And an average person using a budgeting app with gamified features is essentially playing a serious game to improve their finances. Gaming has made economics more playful and play more economically significant.
Looking ahead, we can expect the interactive, engaging, and user-centric principles of gaming to increasingly inform mainstream business. As one industry observer quipped, “the future of business will be where the world is your playground.”
In practical terms, this means more immersive marketing, more interactive customer experiences, and business models that reward loyalty and engagement the way games do. We may see the day when quarterly earnings calls discuss user engagement levels and player retention strategies just as often as they do revenue, which is something that is already happening in certain sectors.
One thing remains certain. The ascent of gaming from niche entertainment to economic titan is a story still in progress, with new chapters being written in real time. Whether through the expansion of virtual reality metaverses, the integration of game theory into everyday apps, or the emergence of yet-unimagined digital assets, the influence of gaming on the market will continue to grow.
Companies and investors who understand the importance of play, along with the community and creativity it brings, are more likely to succeed in today’s world. In the gaming industry, those who welcome fresh and fun ideas are the ones who will do best.