21 Mar Gaming and the Future of Leisure
With Facebook mutating into Meta, VR and AR technology becoming commonplace, and constant video game use becoming a ubiquitous feature of this generations’ children, it’s obvious that the future of leisure is rapidly evolving.
There is significant steam in the gaming sector. In the last few years, we’ve seen IPOs from Roblox and Unity Technologies, tackling gaming and the development tools they require. COVID-19 has only accelerated these existing trends. According to Pitchbook, 2022 M&A deals in the sector are expected to surpass that of last year in the first couple of months, accounting for the gargantuan buyouts of Activision Blizzard and Bungie by Microsoft and Take-Two Interactive respectively that are expected to materialize this year.
Shifting to eSports, another important component of the Games sector, Forbes reports that the values of just the top three eSports teams in 2020 — TSM, Cloud9, and Team Liquid — totals just shy of one billion dollars. These teams soaring evaluations reflect a broader shift into general entertainment enterprises — competition for other modern-age platforms like Netflix and Disney.
Future of leisure technologies, though, are not just limited to traditional gaming ventures and their eSport counterparts. For every video game niche, there exists a fully-fledged entertainment pipeline with intertwined ecosystem of companies. There are development tools, intermediary payment, information management, and communication services begging to be invented to increase the efficiency of their entire process.
At VDK, we find the future of leisure to be much more than just jumping on the next venture that will rise to one on the AppStore charts. It isn’t just gaming; it’s games and everything they change about the way we interact, entertain, and have fun in the modern era.
Sebastian Russo, Market Research & Analysis Intern VDK Capital & Freshman at Stanford University
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