For the past five years, the top-performing shows on major streaming platforms have been adaptations of video game IP, such as 'The Last of Us', 'Fallout', and 'The Witcher'. This demonstrates a significant cultural shift where gaming franchises are now the dominant source of new, blockbuster entertainment content.
Related Insights
The time Americans spent watching others play video games on platforms like Twitch and YouTube last year was double the time spent watching Netflix. This highlights that gaming has become a massive spectator medium, rivaling and surpassing traditional streaming entertainment in engagement.
The recent success of video game adaptations like 'Fallout' is due to showrunners (e.g., Jonah Nolan) who are genuine, lifelong fans of the source material. Unlike early attempts led by opportunistic studios, modern adaptations are created by people who deeply understand the game's nuances, resulting in higher quality.
Critics lament declining focus, yet popular video games like Baldur's Gate 3 demand 75+ hours of intense concentration. This is over five times longer than Wagner's entire Ring Cycle opera, a historical benchmark for sustained cultural attention, quantitatively refuting the attention decline narrative.
Historically, the value of content IP like scripts and music declined sharply 30-60 days after release. AI tools can now "reimagine" these dormant libraries quickly and cost-effectively, creating new derivative works. This presents a massive, previously untapped opportunity to unlock new revenue streams from back catalogs.
![Media M&A - [Business Breakdowns, EP.230] thumbnail](https://megaphone.imgix.net/podcasts/8404be2a-a3c6-11f0-9d01-7b00b28a9d50/image/9a48597af1149c3b024e8d2f7327aa89.jpg?ixlib=rails-4.3.1&max-w=3000&max-h=3000&fit=crop&auto=format,compress)
The modern phenomenon of children watching others play video games (Twitch) or with toys (Ryan's Toys) is not a strange new behavior. It is the digital equivalent of watching sports or reality TV—a form of passive, vicarious entertainment that has fulfilled a fundamental human desire for generations.
After a decade of dormancy, machinima is seeing a resurgence, not in fiction but in documentary. Award-winning films like *Grand Theft Hamlet* and *The Remarkable Life of Ebelin* use game engines to document real human interactions within virtual worlds or to recreate stories of people whose primary lives were online, proving the medium's power for authentic storytelling.
The company's 'Netflix for games' service failed because the user behavior model was flawed. Unlike movies, which are consumed in hours, gamers often engage deeply with a single game for months or years. This long lifespan per title weakens the value proposition of a broad, all-you-can-play subscription.
The next marketing wave isn't chasing viral trends, which builds trend recall but not brand recall. Instead, brands must create immersive, episodic 'worlds' that function as standalone entertainment. This shifts the goal from grabbing attention to holding it through compelling, serialized content.
Netflix's content strategy has adapted to the reality of dual-screen viewing. Realizing audiences are often on their phones, they produce shows that are easy to follow in the background. This involves constant plot "signposting" so a distracted viewer can look up and immediately understand what's happening.
The entertainment industry's resentment towards Netflix is misplaced. Swisher argues that studios are in decline because they failed to modernize, lean into technology, and listen to consumers. Netflix simply capitalized on the industry's inefficient and outdated business models by building a product people wanted.
