Female players are changing esports and broadening its appeal.
Female players are changing esports and broadening its appeal.
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Playgroundz: The Leisure Economy rises with mobile esports, female gamers, and influencers

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 6 min

Most gamers dream about being Ninja, a video gamer who became the No. 1 social “influencer” in sports — beating out Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar, Lionel Messi, and LeBron James — by playing Fortnite, earning on average $400,000 to $500,000 a day. That’s the crest of the Leisure Economy, or the economic change that comes as people get paid to play games.

Playgroundz, a video game data analytics and research platform described as a “Google” for video games, has taken a deeper dive into this phenomenon with its Leisure Economy Research Study, developed in tandem with video game database API, Internet Game Data Base (IGDB), and video game market research company NPD Group. This reinforces one of our themes for the GamesBeat Summit 2019, which takes place on April 23–24 in Los Angeles.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.