GamesBeat Summit Next Panel Focuses on Turning Fun and Games into Dollars and Cents

Online gaming is big business, with companies large and small — as well as gaming enthusiasts — scrambling to find innovative ways to grow market share and monetize their creations. A panel discussion during the GamesBeat Summit Next 2021 conference focused on advice and best practices from the founders of three gaming start-ups.

Three Samsung Next portfolio companies participated in the panel, titled “Paths to Monetization for Professional and Amateur Gamers.” Brendon Kim, Managing Director and Global Head of Investments at Samsung Next led the discussion, which included Players’ Lounge, StreamElements, and Overwolf.

Brendon oversees global activities for Samsung Next’s investment team, including its operations and the financial investments made in early stage founders building in the technology areas of AI, blockchain, fintech, healthtech, infrastructure, and mediatech. He has more than 20 years of experience investing in early stage technology companies, and was an early investor in Roblox. The three panelists included Austin Woolridge, co-founder and CEO of Players' Lounge; Doron Nir, co-founder and President of StreamElements; and Shahar​ ​Sorek, CMO of Overwolf.

Here's a condensed version of the panel discussion. The full session can be viewed on the VentureBeat Vimeo Channel here.

Brendon: We are really excited to be a part of GamesBeat Summit Next, where we're having conversations with some of the best builders in tech. We've got three of them here today to discuss paths to monetization for gamers. Okay, let's kick this off.

Austin: Thanks for having me. Players’ Lounge enables gamers of all skill levels to bet on themselves in their favorite video games. This can be done against other gamers in head-to-head competitions or tournaments, or against the house, all within an easy-to-use app. We've facilitated over $125 million in bets since 2018.

Doron: Thank you, Brendon, StreamElements provides live and video on demand (VOD) content creators with a full stack of tools to engage their audience, create the best possible content, and monetize it in various ways: from audience directions and merchandising to e-commerce and brand sponsorships.

Shahar: Good to be here. Overwolf is a software platform that allows third party developers, whether they're individuals or startups, to build on top of existing AAA games. We also provide the biggest modding platform in the world through CurseForge core. We cater to around 20 million monthly active gamers and over 87,000 creators.

Brendon: What's really interesting about the companies here today is the very different ways that gamers are monetizing. So I want to start with Doron. Please tell us a little bit about the creators and gamers and streamers that you work with. How do they think about monetization and what's the typical path for a gamer in terms of deriving a value or monetizing on your platform?

Doron: StreamElements is being used by over 1.2 million monthly active creators. How they monetize, actually changes throughout their life cycle as content creators. If you're starting, you're probably going to use our audience engagement tools, and you're going to be mostly focused on building a community and building an audience that will watch you regularly and consume your content across all social media platforms. As you continue to grow, monetization kicks in, and usually monetization starts from very simple things like having a merchandising t-shirt printed with the logo of your channel, or just getting some initial subscriptions. But as you grow, and you become bigger, and potentially become a star, that's where brand sponsorships kick-in.

Brendon: That's interesting. Shahar, what's been your experience? Maybe you can expand a little bit about what your platform does and what you think of when you say creators, like who are they?

Shahar: Sure. Modding has existed from the first day games were created, and there's sort of a multi-class right? There's the gamer creator. A gamer can play as an individual or with a team. The ultimate interaction is creating content with or on the game. And that existed forever, but over the last four decades, intellectual property owners have excluded the creators from their ecosystems because they were worried about IP infringement. But now, due to games like ROBLOX and Minecraft, there's a demand for content creation like never before. And the big IP owners, and the market in general, is enabling an ecosystem of content creation within games. Overwolf offers a platform for these modder and in-game creators to actually make a living off their creations, and also to support and work hand-in-hand with some of the IPs holders on creating new modding ecosystems.

Brendon: That's interesting. So modders still want to work with developers, stay within the confines of the developers, and make sure they're not breaking any rules, so they've got to work with these larger, larger players. Austin, I haven't forgotten about you. I'll get to you, but Doron, I want to go back to you because your streamers are actually also working with larger corporate kind of players too, right?

Doron: Yes. First of all, the vast majority of video content creators are widely embraced by game publishers. Game publishers want to be in connection with these creators. They want to facilitate creator communities around their game. It gets to the point where the success of the launch of a game to a certain extent is now measured by how many streamers adopted it, and how much video content was created around that.

Brendon: Interesting. Austin, you've got a very different perspective on this, right? Can you tell us a little bit more about  your focus?

Austin: So e-sports is obviously booming on a professional level, but until very recently, only a very small percentage of gamers could actually make money solely off of their gaming skills. With professional e-sports, similar to traditional sports, there are tens of millions of gamers out there competing for just a small handful of professional spots. But the vast majority are not going pro, and that creates a huge demand for opportunities that allow amateur gamers to monetize their skills. The opportunity is massive because it's not just the best of the best who want this opportunity to earn. There is desire from all skill levels. A company like Players’ Lounge can touch all gamers in this regard, regardless of how competitive they actually are.

Brendon: Do you see Players’ Lounge as sort of a stepping tool to going pro? 

Austin: It's certainly a component, and it has happened many times. The nonprofessional audience is so vast that there are so many different competitive desires, but they all have the common interest of making money, specifically being good at their favorite game.

Brendon: Interesting. Doron, we touched on the evolution of gamers and how gamers have gone from playing to creating to monetizing. Can you tell us a little bit more about what features are more popular with gamers and whether gamers are approaching things differently than other creators on your platform?

Doron: Absolutely. So first of all, the majority of live streamers that use StreamElements are, in fact, gamers. It's interesting because even though they are gamers, some of the content that they're creating might not necessarily be gaming content. In fact, the number one most popular category on Twitch is called Just Chatting, which is basically just hanging out with the audience, talking to them, not playing any game, and just building the community. In terms of the features that they use on StreamElements, it actually changes based on the life cycle of the video content. In the beginning, it's more about chat moderation, about giving loyalty points to the audience, and letting them redeem those loyalty points with perks, which is a very popular feature in StreamElements. As the creator becomes bigger, it becomes less about just giving perks to the audience and more about just connecting with the audience. So they're going to use more features, like the merchandising platform to sell their merch.

Brendon: What I’ve found interesting in our conversation is, we talked a little bit about the evolution of the gamer, and how they evolve as they gain experience. Or perhaps more accurately, it's really the under-appreciation of gamers as creators. But as we look to the future, how do you think this evolution continues? What do you think gamers will be doing on your platforms? How will they be evolving on your platforms? Let’s start with Shahar, and then Austin, and then wrap-up with Doron.

Shahar: So we are big believers that the future is user-generated content. It's going to be more and more about UGC, the united gaming community, just because of the rapid iterations and community involvement. I think that we're going to see a lot of elements that go into community management and more creator ecosystems around a core experience. We're looking at the future to see how to build services around tokenization. The gamer creator segment is huge, and it splits into many different niches. Some of them are behind the computer, some of them at the back end, and some of them at the front end. But the profession of the future will be around user generated creators.

Brendon: Very interesting. Austin, what do you think?

Austin: I think Shahar has a really good point in that, there are so many different verticals and so many ways that communities can be created by gamers, and those communities can be monetized. Where Players’ Lounge can and will step in is to serve people who want to play competitively, but don't necessarily want to go through all the work required to become a pro. And a lot of people follow their favorite streamer or content creator who plays at like a slightly higher level than them. And a tool that we can give that streamer or content creator is the ability to create their own competitions and easy-to-use solutions, where they can tap into Players' Lounge and we can offer a competition for their subscriber base or their followers with just a few easy clicks of a button. And we can also be the medium that allows play for money.

Brendon: Fantastic. Doron?

Doron: Gamers are the biggest unreachable audience in the world today. The only way to reach them is through games, and the video gaming creators that cover those games and broadcast these games. And because of that, you're going to see a massive influx of brands that are going to be working with gaming creators, with game publishers, and with platforms like Overwolf, on reaching that audience. And gaming as a medium is going to become one of the most important things in the next two decades. Anybody who broadcasts these games or creates video content around these games knows that the metaverse already exists. I think because of that, the fact that major media companies like Facebook are finally heading in that direction, just shows that the future is very, very bright for gamers. And it doesn't matter if it's because you know how to play well or create video content or create actual mods for game experiences. It's all going to be beautiful.

Emily Koster is Director of Communications at Samsung Next. Samsung Next's investment strategy is limited to its own views and does not reflect the vision or strategy of any other Samsung business unit, including, but not limited, to Samsung Electronics.

 If you’re a founder, we’d like to meet you.