These social hubs represent huge opportunities for brands to directly access and stay connected with millions, if not billions, of consumers. When US rapper Travis Scott performed a live set in Fortnite, more than 12 million gamers tuned in to watch. So where are Gen Zers going to hang out? Yep, that’s right, in games. In the US, the number of teenagers on Facebook has dropped by almost a quarter. And Gen Z has been slowly and steadily shunning traditional social media platforms over the past few years. Gen Z is interested in two things: social media and gaming. Gen Z is the first truly digitally native generation. If we look at who’s playing Roblox, it’s predominantly Gen Z. We also saw millions of gamers go online to socialise because it was impossible to hang out with their friends in person, and that’s what makes the likes of Roblox, Minecraft and Crey so key to popular culture right now. The huge upsurge in gaming was only partly caused by physical isolation and boredom from being told to stay at home. This has now dropped by around one quarter, and that’s significant, because the stats closely mirror the impact the pandemic is having on social disconnect. Roblox was the most popular mobile game in the US last year, with users averaging 100 minutes play per day. It operates using a standard free to play model, with in app purchasing options, and developers on Roblox take 30% of any proceeds. If you’re not familiar with Roblox, it’s one of a newish breed of gaming platforms where players create, share, collaborate and play user generated games, in a similar fashion to Minecraft, Fortnite and our own platform Crey. And, when you consider that the entire global games industry’s revenues were estimated at $160 billion last year (Newzoo: December 2020), you start to understand why Roblox’s public listing has raised so much interest and so many questions, starting with why there’s such phenomenal interest in a ‘game’, why it’s worth so much and what all this says – and means – for the games industry? Interestingly, this is significantly more than Epic Games is worth (owner of Fortnite), which according to CNBC was a mere $17.5 billion in August 2020. Last week, Roblox went public with a direct listing (DLO) and impressed investors so much it reached a first day valuation of $38.3 billion.
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