Videogames are more of a rich guy's hobby than ever, says analyst, and that's 'leaving a whole portion of the market to Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox'

The term "K-shaped economy" is one that economists and finance writers came up with to avoid having to say "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer."* It goes like this: as the economy recovers from shocks like the Covid-19 pandemic, the recovery is uneven across sectors and income levels. The already-affluent at the top of the K bounce back, sometimes doing even better than they were pre-crisis, while the poor at the K's bottom stay poor or get poorer.

I am not writing this to enlist you into the struggle for world socialism (not just that, anyway). It's a term with relevance to our own videogamey corner of the world. In a recent chat with Edge magazine, analyst Matt Piscatella said the trend for our hobby—not just PC games, but games in general—is that they're getting more and more focused on high-earners.

"A bigger portion of the market is going to people who are more affluent, have higher incomes, and the lower-income parts of the market are really struggling," said Piscatella. "That premium gaming space is leaning more and more on the affluent consumer."

Meanwhile, he notes, "we’re basically leaving a whole portion of the market to Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox and mobile content." Just like I used to pour days and weeks into free flash games on Newgrounds and Miniclip, so do modern kids pour their time into, well, Fortnite, Roblox, and whatever's free on the App Store right now. Difference is, of course, the Newgrounds flash games I played generally weren't filled with a near-endless number of microtransactions.

There's a concern here that the whole market for videogames will get (more) fragmented between those of us with money to burn enjoying our >$70-hour flagship games while less affluent players will spend their time getting nickel and dimed by supposedly free games.

There's something quite Vimes' Boots Theory about the whole thing: those of us who can afford to spend more all at once on a new game get to enjoy more and better games for longer, while those who can maybe fork over a few bucks every month or couple of weeks get a crummy mobile game filled with "please spend" nags, and still somehow end up spending more than the affluent players over time.

Anyway! How do you solve the issue? Worldwide proletarian revolution. Failing that, Piscatella notes that PC actually keeps a relatively vibrant market of cheap, short-form weirdness going. "If we can get the consoles to start adopting a little bit more of a strategy where they could be a bit more nimble and start pushing these products more," then that could help, he suggests. "But right now, they’re very happy just letting Fortnite dominate the playtime and engagement."

*I should note some economists and folks of their ilk dispute the K-shaped metaphor for the state of the economy. Though you do have to wonder how well they're paid.