Geekstorians: The Pixel Economy | How Gaming Became The World’s Biggest Entertainment Industry

Video games didn’t just become bigger than film, music and TV. They became places people went, watched, gathered, spent money, and built memories inside.In this episode of Geekstorians, Dave from Geektown looks at how gaming quietly became the largest entertainment industry on Earth, and why nobody really announced it.The story begins in April 2020, when millions of people attended Travis Scott’s Astronomical concert inside Fortnite. To some, it looked like a clever pandemic workaround. But for players, this was not a sudden novelty. Fortnite had already become a venue, a stage, a social space, and a place where culture could happen.From there, we trace the rise of the pixel economy: the fragmented numbers that made gaming’s scale strangely hard to see, the smartphone turning play into an everyday habit, the rise of streaming and esports, and the transformation of games from products into persistent worlds.Because somewhere along the way, games stopped being things you played and became places you went.This week’s episode explores how gaming became bigger than film, music and television without a single cultural handover moment, why mobile gaming changed everything, how streaming turned games into something people watched as well as played, why esports made gaming visible at arena scale, and how Minecraft, Fortnite and Roblox changed the idea of what a game could be.For more from Geektown, including TV, film and gaming news, reviews, interviews, and Geektown Radio, head to Geektown.co.uk.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/geektown. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.