📓 Creativ Brief: Our GDC Guide to Gaming
Scopely acquires Niantic. Investors and gaming. Sony tests AI. Gaming revenues by platform.
Gaming is now the largest entertainment medium by far.
The gaming industry’s revenue has eclipsed music, movie, and TV industries’ combined revenues in 2025.
Traditional entertainment studios like Warner Bros, Disney, Amazon, and Netflix are heavily investing into the gaming future. Upstart gaming firms like Epic, Unity, Scopely, and Unreal have acquired eye-popping valuations into the billions.
Gaming’s ascendence has occurred for several reasons.
The interactive nature of the entertainment medium requires a higher level of audience attention. Streaming, movies, audio require passive attention. Interactive entertainment requires full attention and provides more immersive experiences as a result.
A new generation of adults, millennials and Gen Z, were raised on video games. For many of this generation, video games are their primary source of entertainment. This is true for me personally. I estimate my video game-to-streaming TV skew is 60%-40%.
New distribution technology, from cloud computing to mobile phones have made gaming more accessible than ever. Consumers are no longer tethered to consoles or PCs to run games. Games have migrated to all corners of consumer’s lives from handheld devices, to phones, to cloud applications that allow play on lower fidelity devices.
There’s so much more to discover, that’s why the team is headed to Games Developer Conference (GDC) next week, from Sunday the 16th to Thursday the 20th.
We’ve found a full list of GDC events here. If you’re attending GDC and would like to link up, please reply to this email!
Game on!
3 Stories Dominating Media and Tech Headlines
This acquisition encompasses Niantic's other augmented reality games, such as Pikmin Bloom and Monster Hunter Now, as well as companion apps like Campfire and Wayfarer, bringing over 30 million monthly active players and more than $1 billion in annual revenue under Scopely's management.
Why it matters: This strategic move not only expands Scopely's portfolio and diversifies their marquee titles, but also aligns with Saudi Arabia's broader investment strategy to become a global gaming hub, as Scopely was purchased by Savvy Games, a holding company owned by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund. The fund plans to invest an additional $38 billion into video games by 2030.
This funding brings Pragma's total investments to over $50 million and will be used to enhance its scalable infrastructure and expand its suite of game development tools, which include cross-platform accounts, monetization, live operations, and social features like matchmaking and player data systems.
Why it matters: This investment highlights the growing importance of robust backend solutions in the gaming industry, enabling developers to efficiently build and maintain live-service games, thereby influencing future game development and operational strategies.
Sony is testing AI to drive PlayStation characters. In what appears to be leaked footage, a protagonist from the Horizon titles answers questions from player characters with artificially generated animation, writing, and voice. The demo itself seemed to use OpenAI’s speech-to-text from GPT-4 and Llama 3.
Why it matters: Video game designers are currently experimenting with AI. The use cases include code complete, level generation, enemy AI, and in this case dialogue and character animation. This character is voiced by Ashley Burch, a union actor known for her roles in Mythic Quest and other game titles. SAG-AFTRA is still on a conditional strike over protections against AI in voice acting, including voice replacement.
Creativ Spotlight - SXSW Panels Galore
We organized 10 media executives, 3 media organizations, two action-packed panels and two Innovation awards entries this year at SXSW. It was a Texas tornado of a week, but everyone performed great!
Stat of the Week - Gaming Revenue by Platform
Gaming revenues are split between mobile, console and PC. Mobile games continue to make the most revenue due to the sheer distribution of mobile devices amongst the population, while PC and consoles’ capability of running higher fidelity games remains limited.
One Fun Thing - Creativ Wraps SXSW
Despite battling a Texas-sized cold, Sara Yazdani and I had a great time in Austin.
A big thank you to all our partners, clients, press, and friends that turned out to make it great. You all make marketing the next generation of media, entertainment, and tech brands a joy!
Another thank you to the organizers. This festival is a behemoth undertaking!