Meta’s Rick Kelley on what to expect for gaming in 2022

Rick Kelley has a unique window on gaming trends as vice president of global gaming at Meta/Facebook. And so we asked him what to expect in gaming in 2022 at our second annual GamesBeat and Facebook Gaming Summit. And he noted that some gaming trends are being pulled back down to Earth by gravity.

I interviewed Kelley a year ago at our previous went, and now the vice president of global gaming at Meta came back to talk about the latest research Facebook Gaming has collected on gaming during COVID.

A year ago, Kelley said with some relief that millions of new gamers had come into gaming during the pandemic to play games in lieu of other activities. Those players stayed with their new gaming habit and helped mobile gaming grow to new heights. (App Annie said that mobile games grew 20% to $120 billion in 2021; Facebook’s own data will be released soon). He noted there are still about three billion people playing games.