In English there is a term called gatekeeping which is difficult to translate, but easy to explain. Let’s say It is the cadenero of the club that, due to your appearance or socioeconomic status, allows you or not to access the site that it protects.. This example happens perfectly in the video gameespecially when we talk about it being an expensive hobby.
Surely you will say: “Don’t tell me Internet Explorer”however, sometimes the privilege of some makes us forget the lack of others and we enter the unfortunate debate that to be a gamer you need to spend 5 thousand pesos a year and if you don’t, you’re out of the equation.
The first thing you should know is that the word gamer is just a box in an Excel table of a marketer who classifies people by their tastes and sells them something adhoc. The same happens with the boomers, centennials or generation X. Just look at Adam Canover’s conference in which he perfectly describes why millennials don’t exist.
Now, all human beings have the nature of playing, they do that since they were babies and to date there are those who use cards or dominoes or, failing that, a video game console. The point is that you always have to put labels, if not, it’s not funny and you don’t belong to a select group of people who spend a lot of money a year on titles that don’t even finish due to lack of time.
Latin America, always consumers and lovers of piracy
According to data revealed by Statisticalvideo game profits in Latin America are expected to reach 3.6 billion dollars by 2023. Until 2018, the figure was 2.23 billion and at that time the scepter of the king market belonged to Mexico, then there was Brazil and then Argentina.
Today, curiously, Brazil is the boss – and by far – leaving behind Mexico and then Colombia. Everything changes in 4 years, economies, consumption and support, however, growth is constant and that is something that we must not lose sight of. However, in the shadow of these numbers always appears the always controversial piracy.
From the famous Family games to flashing the PS3, going through all the consoles that could be put a chip, piracy has always been in the region. It wasn’t until distribution channels were improved from the gray market to more formal businesses that there was no longer just the cheap option of piracy. You could sell, trade or even rent original games and that somehow helped the industry.
At the time that Steam regionalizes its services, things change for the video game business in many countries and many titles that are priceless in dollars become more accessible thanks to the fact that they are now priced in the local currency. Let’s just say this was all a long drawn out process, but somehow it worked, although it didn’t solve the problem either.
Right now, video games and Latam are more than just PlayStation, Xbox or Nintendo
At the beginning of this article we talked about gatekeeping and video games and how they are going to tell you that, if you don’t have consoles, physical games and so on, you’re not quite a silverback gamernevertheless, Latin America is cooking apart on this issue thanks to the arrival of mobile games and the fact that these devices are more accessible every day in the region.
Productions of the level and development of free fire that work on almost any phone created a captive audience that only needs a Wi-Fi connection at home to play. We have already lost count of all the times we are asked about diamonds that we do not have and would like to give away.
The market in our region goes beyond consoles, which, although they have a good part of the pie, generate a lot of money just because they are expensive, however, with little investment, many are playing and enjoying the mobile experience, be it with battle royale titles or with very simple developments that are also entertaining.
The options are already in front of many people, they just don’t want to see them because they want the circle to remain closed in a group of users who, well, want it to remain that way.
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Game Pass and PlayStation Plus Extra, the solution to combat FOMO
Ok, surely you already wondered what is the FOMO. In English it means Feeling Of Missing Outor something like: the fear of being left out. You know, because X game came out and everyone is playing it except you. But that should not worry you, because let me tell you that they are not races.
The solution, at least for a good amount of players, is to hire services like Game Pass or now the new PlayStation Plus. These give you access to a robust catalog of titles of all varieties. Obvious, Microsoft’s is the most attractive because it includes its exclusives from day one and Sony’s, well, that one gives you some exclusives that have been out for a long time.
Finally, The task of both services, apart from strengthening their respective brands, is to give players options so that they can play without major problems.. I could also get into the subject of the cloud, which has many benefits for video games, but this service is not in all of Latam and it would be unfair to address it.
Thinking right now that video games are still the same Toby’s Club from 30 years ago means not opening your eyes to the obvious, which is that every day they are available to more people and that no matter the platform, ultimately it’s about enjoying them, and the responsibility of the business falls on the white-collar executives who earn millionaire salaries and who don’t care a bit about us.
Better worry about playing and do it from wherever you want.
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