Chapter 1
Introduction: The Gaming Moment

Outnumbered and depleted of resources, I slam my shield into a ghostly guardsman of Shadowfang Keep, hoping to knock him off the rhythm of blows that have been raining down on my head.

"I need some help."

An arrow whizzes by to my right, though it lands not against the group of foes I'm currently facing but squarely into a second patrol of guardsmen who had not yet reached our location. An error, and potentially a costly one. Alerted to our presence, the guards run to join the fray and add to the already insurmountable odds in front of our stalwart group of five heroes, aiming to free the keep from its foul master, Archmage Arugal.

"We need a lot of help," I say, soliciting any ideas from the team to turn around a seemingly hopeless situation.

"I got it, Dad."

A surge of light fills the air as a healing spell cast by our team priest mends our wounds. Reinvigorated, the remainder of our front line presses the attack, systematically striking down the undead guardsmen.

"Nice job, Heals, sorry about the extra pull," our companion Hunter and originator of the stray arrow whispers to the rest of the party. "This is a great group, much better coordination than most randos."

"Thanks," I write back, "probably because most of us are all in the same room."

Our team was indeed not mostly comprised of "randos" (a random assortment of players)-I filled the team role of "Tank" (protector of the group), supported by my wife as "DPS" (damage-dealer) and teenage son as "Heals" (keeping the rest of the team healthy and alive). We arranged a collection of laptops and PCs together in our suburban home, seeking adventure and daring with wild abandon of our virtual safety in the expansive World of Warcraft as an escape from the very real dangers outside our home during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the settings of this particular adventure were catalyzed by the rather extreme circumstances of a global pandemic, the more basic phenomenon at play here is not new to our family nor to many families like us around the world-parents who are increasingly using gaming as a means to connect with their children. And perhaps more important, games feature prominently in the everyday entertainment of individuals of varying ages, backgrounds, and needs across the world.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is reflected not only in the body of this work (as the historical moment within which it was written), but also stands as a particularly meaningful moment in media and culture when gaming was thrust into the spotlight of popular attention. The last few years have become one of the most important moments for the reception and understanding of gaming within popular culture. Make no mistake, gaming had been steadily on the rise for years and decades before, but with the reassembly of meaning of our everyday lives comes the reassessment of the ways in which we consume media. Put another way, the influence of COVID-19 on gaming was less a catalyst and more a lens through which a broader group of consumers and decision makers across the world saw the impact of gaming on everyday lives. The household scenario described above has been played out in innumerable homes across the world.

Dads, moms, millennials, Gen Z, financial advisors, lawyers, and others from all walks of life are among the billions of consumers logging innumerable hours across a multitude of purpose-built and generalized consumer devices across one of the largest and rapidly growing media ecosystems in the world-video gaming. Often misunderstood, seldom discussed beyond the semicloistered businesses that support it and fandom that fuels it, recent circumstances have shined the spotlight on video gaming, not just as a participatory media, but as a professionalized pursuit (esports).

When focusing on the professional side of gaming, I found it instructive to travel across the world from my home in metro New York to Tokyo for another example. Portions of this book were written during the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Any Olympics has a heavy impact on popular culture, but these particular games are noteworthy in a book about gaming for a number of reasons-first, Tokyo is the mecca of video gaming, and its influence on the games was portrayed throughout the games: From Japanese, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe dressed as Super Mario for the countdown to Tokyo's Summer Games, to upwards of 19 video game scores, ranging from Final Fantasy to Sonic the Hedgehog, being played during the parade of nations (yes, really).

Second, the most apparent abnormality in the 2020 Olympiad was the fact that some of the most hallowed and long-standing traditions in sports were left without an audience. Sport as we know it had faced innumerable disruptions over the previous year (including the fact that the "2020" Summer Games were held in 2021). In fact, seasons for many sports were canceled because they require physical contact. In other cases, competitions were held in empty arenas.

Throughout this time of disruption, one type of competitive entertainment could still be played at the highest levels-esports. While the artifacts and conduct of esports couldn't fully escape the impact of COVID-19 (even games played virtually require massive amounts of technological coordination to ensure that the virtual playing field remains fair), here too emerged a moment where the superpowers of gaming and esports became profoundly clear-both are media that don't require physical contact for socialization or competition.

As one looked upon the empty stands in Tokyo, fundamental questions around the role of audiences and professional competition were posed, especially how the future and definition of sport are changing with the ebbs and flows of technology and culture. Indeed, the International Olympic Committee has been debating the inclusion of esports as a medaled event for a number of years, and we may see this come to fruition as soon at the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles. Prior to the traditional Olympic Games, Tokyo hosted the Virtual Olympic Series, a stepping-stone where virtual representations of physical sports (motorsport, cycling, baseball, etc.) were played by an emerging subset of professional competitors.

I don't highlight these examples to overplay the importance of the events of 2020 and 2021 on video games and esports. While the circumstances of those years facilitated an increase in the number of individuals looking for new means of entertainment (creating the occasional new passion or re-investigation of a previous hobby), it did not change the trajectory of these industries so much as give them a boost. What changed was the extent to which the discussion of these forms of media shifted from the periphery to the center of culture. More simply, seemingly everyone came to terms with the fact that gaming was a "thing," and it was having a moment-a moment that has seemingly evolved into a movement.

Late in 2021 the business and technology world became enamored with possibilities of a new, decentralized version of the internet colloquially referred to as Web 3.0. The circumstances of the global pandemic, paired with ongoing interest around the possibilities afforded by blockchain technology, provided fertile ground for concepts such as the metaverse (a persistent, embodied, virtual world that users would traverse as means of accessing this new internet) to take hold. As we will learn, video games have a long history of impacting the ways in which we contextualize new technologies and means of interaction. The isolation imposed by a global pandemic shaped our collective thinking around the possibilities provided by virtual worlds, and virtual worlds have a history dating back almost 50 years in video gaming. Understanding video games has quickly evolved from just a savvy business practice to an essential skill set for maintaining relevancy in the future technology landscape.

These moments and movements speak to broad shifts in consumer behaviors, and from the get-go it's important to clarify that the purpose of this book is not to construct hyperbolic promises around flashes in the pan or buzzy media phenomena that will fade almost as quickly as they came to rise. When we speak about the gaming industry as it exists today we must understand that we are talking about nothing less than a fundamental reorientation around the intersection of technology, culture, fandom, and business. This "gaming moment" very likely brought you to the pages of this book (and in no small way, as we'll discuss, necessitated the creation of this book), and while I promise not to become too deeply academic, what you'll come to understand is that gaming is not just a "new" frontier for savvy marketers and business decision makers. It's a map of how consumers participate in not just the creation of media, but also in the consumption and integration of these multifaceted relationships between consumers, fans, and media. Our understanding of these developments will be greatly enriched and go far beyond a superficial roadmap of tactics.

Understanding the job in front of us, and returning to Shadowfang Keep for a moment, we were soon off to our next adventure. For those of you wishing to join us in spirit-to...