The Creator economy is 100B+ and Growing
The creator economy is the fastest growing sector in the world currently worth more than 100 billion dollars a year.
There’s an entire industry that has blossomed around the concept of creating content to be consumed by others – everything from popular YouTube channels with millions of subscribers and followers to online streaming services like Twitch where people pay money for live game content. Independent Game development has exploded in the last decade thanks to distribution platforms like Steam, The Apple App Store and Google Play.
They monetize their own content – they sell their own ads, participate directly in the creator marketplaces for things like sponsorships or direct sales of merchandise and can set prices their own prices.
Creators are Craftspeople
They’re building communities around a passion – just like musicians do when performing in front of an audience, comedians when doing standup at a club, there are gamers out there who find joy in streaming themselves playing video games for hours on end to online audiences from all over the world. But the creator economy is more than just the streamers.
It’s also the designers selling t-shirts and merchandise, the online course creators who teach people new skills in work and life, the developers making video games played by billions worldwide on phones, computers and gaming consoles.
Games Industry User Generated Content
Users across the world spend more than one billion hours a day using user generated content despite not paying for games. Some of which goes on to become paid product features such as the new extension creator in Starcraft II or Dota 2’s workshop allowing users to create custom items and sell them – this has made some people hundreds of thousands of dollars as some unique weapons created there were sold as real products. Other sources include mods, new maps and even entirely new games like Day Z or Minecraft.
Allowing players to create their own content enhances engagement and supports overall industry growth given that it improves the overall player experience given that they’re constantly helped by an engaged and constantly producing community (and you can’t beat free
Game Making. Not Just Playing
There is a growing group of people who spend at least as much time making games as they do playing them. This ranges from creating mods and maps, painting and drawing concept art for either their own projects or artists and companies looking to contract out work.
As with creator economy in general, the field of game development has also been heavily impacted by the availability of tools coupled with distribution platforms allowing anyone to publish something – be it finished games for sale on Steam’s platform or simple HTML5 examples that you can play right in your browser without needing to download anything.
Game making clubs and classes exist for kids across the world to help them get started and video tutorials on popular platforms like Roblox are available and free to watch.
Upskilling kids for the creator economy
Given that the creator economy is growing at a tremendous pace, it only makes sense to make sure kids are upskilled for this future to take advantage.
It’s valuable for them to learn how to utilize tools common in game development along with HTML5 or Unity3D which are popular platforms for beginners who want to create games without needing to learn complex languages like C++ first.
This sort of knowledge gives them an advantage over their peers when applying for jobs as well as opens up more opportunities for self-employment – there are many examples of people earning six figures working from home creating artwork or programming games out of nothing but time and ideas.