DIGITAL LIFE

Entertainment 4.0

Games entered the kids' lives and changed not only their habits, but the entire culture and entertainment market. The enormous prejudice against its passionate practitioners is, in short, ceasing to exist. However, to reach this level of acceptance and the billionaire financial movement that this market promotes today, a lot of kids suffered under the threat of their mother's slipper - myself included.
When 14 million people stop to watch Travis Scott's show at Fortinite, we feel the strength of what it is today. The Astronomical, name (very happy, by the way) of the rapper's avatar performance, was seen by 12.3 million players directly in the game and by another 2 million on YouTube and Twitch, according to its developer, Epic Games.
Fortinite is the most lucrative free game out there, and it was not the first time that it made room for artists. The last great performance had been that of DJ Marshmello, who played for 10.7 million players, in February 2019. Show in virtual environment is not exactly a novelty. In 2006, U2 took fans who were not regular players into the then-famous Second Life.
Many mothers and fathers, seeing this immense success in behavior and market, may even feel a twinge of regret in censoring their children in the past. I suffered a lot with my mother because of that. If there was one thing that she did badly, it was my habit of playing video games in my teens. "It won't take you anywhere," she said. I empathize because I know where it came from, but she was radically wrong about the possible future for her only child.
Of course, I am forever grateful to her for much of what I am and what I have achieved to date. But about games, she was wrong. I even understand, especially now, looking in the rearview mirror. It was the fear of the new, common, generalized and historical social behavior, which affects parents who tend to be conservative in their customs, but who always want the best for their children.
In the 1950s, in the USA, there were parents who feared that Elvis would make his daughters perverted. Here in Brazil, in the 1960s, there was a march against the electric guitar. It is even difficult to imagine that today. The denial of access to the virtues of the videogame until the early 2000s, out of a fear that the son would become addicted to a stretch with no future, was something very similar.
There is also the question of nostalgia, punctuated by the old maxim of “in my time it was better”. Like it or not, we live in the digital age, and it no longer makes sense to say that your child has to spin the top and fly a kite just because that was the healthy reality you experienced in childhood. In fact, today's kids can do both, play Counter-Strike and hit the ball outside.
I was a teenager who arrived from the street at 6 pm and played until midnight, after working out, running or playing football. I played a lot of video games, and everything: Dota, Ragnorak, Tibia, Battlefield - I saw this industry grow while consuming it.
Currently, I don't play anything anymore, I have other hobbies. Among them, I am a big consumer of streaming: I watch other users playing games. I've been a fan of Twitch, the gaming platform, since it started, at the beginning of the last decade. And, I confess, I find it much nicer to see someone play watching a Marvel movie on Netflix.
That stereotype of the boy who likes video games to be antisocial, who isolates himself from the world and spends his day closed in his playing room, is also outdated. Game is what I call a remote shared experience: the vast majority play with someone, even though physically distant from each other. Can you imagine how it didn't help children and teenagers to break the loneliness of social isolation during the pandemic?
Today, millions of people are in these eSports (or e-sports) ecosystems. It is no longer a niche for boys. Children, youth, adults and even ultra-targeted audiences (like gaymers, from the LBTQI + universe), are playing or watching famous players perform on YouTube.
And it doesn't even have to be that famous. With 10,000 followers, a professional gamer can already earn between R$10 and R$15 thousand per month(local currency) from donations from fans and the remuneration given by the platform. Among the professionals, there are boys earning millions. American Kyle Giersdorf, known as Bugha, won the first Fortinite World Cup last year, when he was just 16, and took home a $3 million prize (at the current exchange rate, about $15 million).
In the last few years, the games market has surpassed the music and cinema market, and already has more than two together - and to think that my generation grew up hearing that video games were a waste of time.

Opportunities for brands
Being fascinated by eSports and being connected to this world, I get my hair standing on end, watching, from the box and eating popcorn, the immense opportunity that companies are missing.
Why aren't brands still within these virtual game environments? In addition to banners and pop-ups, which I strongly advise against, consider the amount of possibilities for brand insertion and e-commerce. An avatar can wear designer clothes and sneakers, drink soft drinks, buy cars, listen to music, visit beaches, museums, historic places.
Buying clothes for the avatar even has a proper name within games: skin. Something that the Italian brand Gucci has already embraced. In June, the company announced a partnership with the game Tennis Clash. The characters Diana and Jonah can be dressed from head to toe with luxury designer looks. More than being present among the players, Gucci took advantage of the channel to reinforce its e-commerce. When buying clothes for the avatar, the player receives the real model at home, for him to use.
If you are still not convinced, I will give just two more examples of innovation and audience in this growing and promising market. In 2018, more people watched the League of Legends final, the most popular game that exists today, than the FIFA World Cup final. Finally, this year TikTok launched the first tournament for college players in the United States, the TikTok Cup.
Game is culture, like gastronomy and art. In fact, creating a game from scratch is an art, some take up to seven years to be developed, in a careful and detailed process. It is a market that must be looked at with the same seriousness that game creators look at their audience.
My mother was wrong in the 90s. Don't be wrong in 2025. 

By Rapha Avellar, Brazil