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The Leisure Economy: How to make money playing games in 2020

The Leisure Economy is the embodiment of the hope that someday we could all get paid to play games. It has been a common topic at our GamesBeat Summit events, and came up again at our GamesBeat Summit 2020 in a fireside chat with John Linden, the CEO of Mythical Games.

As so many people struggle with joblessness now, games are creating a new economy of people who can make a living by getting paid to play games. These people include esports athletes, cosplayers, influencers, YouTubers, livestreamers, modders, and many other people getting paid to play. Many of these careers didn’t exist a decade ago.

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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.