The DeanBeat: What’s behind this week’s big investments in games

Sometimes the game industry seems small and quiet compared to a “hot” industry like artificial intelligence. Then we get a week like this one, where everything turns upside down, and I can understand why it has become a $109 billion business, according to market seer Newzoo. When the dust settles, I think we’ll find that much of the excitement leads to Asia and that we are but stones on a giant game of Go.

On Wednesday, Google bought virtual reality game developer Owlchemy Labs, maker of the hilarious Job Simulator. After years of collecting a toll on games as the operator of the Google Play store, the move was Google’s first acknowledgement that it may need to become a first-party game publisher, rather than leave the game making to third-party developers. It may have been a small deal, but it’s always worth noting when a giant platform company realizes that games are important.