Turning players into creators represents the biggest market opportunity in video games in 2023.
That was one takeaway from a discussion last week about mobile gaming and the gaming industry. The event, hosted at Seattle’s historic Rainier Club, featured Nellie Hughes, design director at Xbox Game Studios Publishing, and Josh Ayala, CEO of Seattle-based mobile developer Perfect Day Games.
“The user-generated content space is … the next, biggest kind of sea change,” Ayala said.
Both Hughes and Ayala have children who worked on creative projects within various games, such as Roblox, the Minecraft marketplace, and Rec Room, all of which let players use tools provided by developers to make, trade, and even sell in-game items with one another.
Hughes said her 12-year-old was drawn to Roblox because he’s a content creator, which “pulls in a lot of kids, from all ages.” She also noted that the game allows people to create their own server.
“He was able to find a group of folks that he really liked, and the communication was there,” Hughes said.
User-created content in current games can include cosmetic items, such as Minecraft’s “Skin Packs” that offer a new look for in-game characters; the Steam Workshop for Valve’s Team Fortress 2, where players submit content for possible official inclusion in the full game; or entirely new minigames like Rec Room’s Western set.
This can be lucrative for both developers and players; Rec Room reported in December that it had paid out $1 million to content creators within its game, while Roblox announced last month that it had paid out over $500 million.
However, any game that primarily consists of user-generated content also sets itself up for significant challenges when it comes to effectively managing that content.
Roblox in particular has recently come under fire from multiple sides for its lax to non-existent moderation policies, including a viral thread on Twitter from earlier this year.
“As a parent, and as a video game maker, [Roblox’s] quality level is too low for me to be satisfied,” Ayala said. “There’s some content in there that’s not okay for my 8-year-old to see. [Roblox’s developers] are not doing a good job as the managers of that content, and at rules enforcement and age-gating.”
Minecraft and Rec Room, by comparison, work much harder at age-gating, with a decent overall success rate, which is a process that Ayala is actively studying.
“My objective is to reduce the friction,” Ayala said, “so anything that’s been built in a game should feel like it’s part of an intentional experience. That’s part of the fun of turning players into creators.”
The hour-long discussion also touched on the current fall-off in venture capital investments; the difference between “hardcore,” “casual,” and the relatively new “hyper-casual” categories of games; and the shift to remote work in games development.
“Hardcore” and “casual” are a couple of terms that get used a lot within gaming enthusiast and production circles, but don’t really mean a lot to anyone outside of them. In general, as Hughes and Ayala explained, they’ve come to be shorthand for the amount of time and effort that a game requires to be enjoyable.
A “hardcore” game is something that’s made to have several hours, days, or weeks sunk into it, whereas a “casual” game — like much of what’s typically available on mobile platforms — can easily be jumped into with no previous experience and are made to be played in short bursts. By these definitions, the average RPG or action game would be considered hardcore, whereas time-killing puzzlers like Bejeweled or Candy Crush would be casual.
A “hyper-casual” game goes beyond even that, to describe games where an average session only lasts a few minutes, or even a few seconds, such as the 2013 viral hit Flappy Bird. The latter is a quickly-growing category, particularly in the mobile gaming space, which makes up just over half of the global video game market.
“You guys in this room didn’t realize that you’re gamers,” Ayala said. “You probably don’t even call yourself a gamer today, but just like we’ve all got board games on our shelves at home, now everyone has games on their phone.”
The panel was part of the semi-regular “Biz Buzz” event, which is held by Mercosul Ventures managing partner and Business Committee member Walter Benadof at the Rainier Club. The “Biz Buzz” fireside chats are typically aimed at educating club members about “business happenings” in the city, according to Benadof.
