(Left to right) The Leisure Economy panelists: Adam Sessler, Co-Founder of Spiketrap; Jon "Neverdie" Jacobs, CEO of Neverdie Studios; Gio Hunt, EVP & Executive Producer of Platform Technology & Experiences at Blizzard Entertainment; Philip Rosedale, Founder & CEO of High Fidelity; Craig Donato, CBO at Roblox

Posted inin Business

The Leisure Economy: Where we all get paid to play games

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
April 18, 2018
Updated June 18, 2025
3 min

Of all the ideas at our recent GamesBeat Summit 2018, I loved the notion of The Leisure Economy. This is about a utopia we can create where people can make a living by getting paid to play games.

As I noted in my opening talk at the recent event, I do that as a game journalist. But today, we have many more candidates who have a chance at living the dream. They include esports athletes, cosplayers, influencers, YouTubers, livestreamers, modders, and many other people getting paid to play.

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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.