Expansion of Brazilian Games Market Attributed to Changes in Traditional Work Methods
The global electronic games sector is expanding, having generated more than US$196.8 billion in 2022, according to PwC projections . The Covid-19 pandemic influenced these numbers, as it was responsible for popularizing remote work and, in addition, forced people to be confined to their homes, resulting in an increase in the number of players.
This area, which was previously associated with children and teenagers, now reaches an extremely plural and diverse audience. In fact, according to the research company Euromonitor , 21% of seniors over 60 play video games frequently, which shows that they are increasingly connected with the digital universe.
In this sense, the Brazilian game development industry is following global growth. This is what the 9th edition of Pesquisa Game Brasil (PGB) states , which found a 169% increase in the number of developer studios in Brazil compared to 2018 — from 375 to more than a thousand.
Brazilian scenario
Ricardo Nakamura, professor at the Polytechnic School (Poli) of the University of São Paulo (USP) and researcher at the Institute of Advanced Studies (IEA), states that the migration to digital distribution is the main factor in the expansion of the development and consumption market of electronic games in the country. “As a large part of digital games are distributed over the internet, no longer in the physical package, which has to be placed in a store and has all the logistics challenges, we see this expansion”, he develops .
Given this scenario, Brazil is currently the largest games market in Latin America and 13th in the world ranking, responsible for moving around R$ 12 billion per year, according to Newzoo estimates , and with investment greater than more than US $20 billion in companies in the area this decade alone, according to a survey by XDS . Regarding exports, the Brazil Games report revealed that, in 2021, the US$50 million mark was surpassed and the main consumers of national productions are the United States and Latin America itself.
According to the professor, another important aspect of this reality was the change in the traditional way of working, which, especially after the pandemic, is increasingly decentralized and several projects are outsourced: “When studios are going to do a big project, they They hire or subcontract other companies, sometimes in different countries, to build a game and each one is responsible for some tasks. This logic of distributed and remote work helps with this expansion.”
According to the report, Brazilian companies that develop electronic games do not have a single focus for production, operating in different sectors to reach different audiences and diversifying their source of revenue. The highlights are entertainment games and educational games, respectively 76% and 12%, and the devices that have the most products are cell phones (38%) and computers (20%).
Thus, the expert analyzes how this influences the development of other technological areas in Brazil: “Often, these companies carry out game projects, but they also carry out other projects, such as training systems or advertising software. At the same time, the projects are multidisciplinary, so they have to hire different specialists.” In this way, he adds that, by developing varied systems and involving professionals from different areas, there is an exchange of knowledge that goes beyond the games market and penetrates the entire technology industry.
Regional concentration
Despite this positive scenario in Brazil, in which production is increasingly digitalized and studios are present in all regions of the country, there is still a concentration in the Southeast region — more than 55% of companies are located there. This is due to historical regional inequality, which influenced this niche to be started in this region, especially in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, more than 20 years ago.
In this context, more than 40% of the courses registered with the Ministry of Education (MEC) focused on the electronic games market are found in the Southeast, with only 0.27% of them being offered by the public sector. Furthermore, the main and largest gaming-related events in Latin America, such as Brasil Game Show (BGS), Campus Party and Comic Con Experience (CCXP), are held in the city of São Paulo.
Prosperous future
According to reports that deal with the subject of the Brazilian electronic games industry, there is a tendency for small and medium-sized companies in the area to mature — which have already been in the market for at least five years. “You can imagine the maturity of this group, which is focusing on creativity and launching innovative games with different proposals, precisely because of the agility of being small companies working on shorter projects”, explains the professor.
Finally, Ricardo Nakamura states that, as studios reach this maturity, they create a portfolio of games that demonstrate competence for the international scene. Consequently, global entities seek to hire them to develop entire projects — or part of them — due to the decentralization of the market, which allows remote work.