IGN Entertainment (IGNE), the parent organization of GamesIndustry.biz, has released a new report developed in association with Kantar and UC Berkeley analysing entertainment consumption. The data, based on detailed polling of thousands of highly-committed content consumers in the US, UK and Australia, suggests diverging consumption habits of three distinct generations of consumers.
Among the games-specific insights of the report, highlights include:
- 71% of audiences no longer purchase physical music and 62% no longer buy full-price games
- Gen X respondents prioritised Google search to discover new games, while Millennials favoured 85% YouTube and Gen Z respondents prioritised social media
- Millennial (38%) and Gen Z (42%) audiences are much more likely to buy games at full price, while Generation X lags far behind at 20%
- Generation X favours single-player games and Generation Z prefers multiplayer titles to almost exactly the same degree, while Millennial players remain almost evenly split
- Generation X and Millennials are more likely to return to games in order to complete or master them, while Gen Z are primarily motivated by new customisation or community content
- Consumption of guides and game help varies by generation, with Gen X indexing higher on tips videos, Millennials on map tools and Generation Z on build guides
- Generation X are highly sceptical of AI and more trusting of brand recognition, being 38% less likely to use AI for discovery and 44% less likely to believe that AI summaries are as good as human ones
The report is an outgrowth of internal data collection and analysis which the company previously only used for internal tracking and client reports. “We’ve done a version of this forever,” says Tate Fiebing, Senior Director of Business Intelligence at IGNE. “It started in like, 2010. But it was historically very focused on gaming, and then it was always just for client presentations. It’s never been published.”
The Generations in Play report, by contrast, started with a desire to look externally at content consumption patterns with a view to developing a wider understanding of audience intent across multiple entertainment formats, which lead the firm to work with external partners Kantar and UC Berkley and ultimately to see “where Gen Z, millennials and Gen X are consuming content,” Karl Stewart, SVP of IGNE Global Marketing, told the Brands in Play podcast.
“Working with Kantar and at UC Berkeley, we identified people to ask the questions to. They were highly qualified entertainment cinephiles, gamers consuming a lot of stuff weekly… we’re not talking about casual here. We’re talking about people who basically say: I only have so many hours in the week, and this is still where I choose to spend my disposable time.”
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Picking one gaming example, Stewart says that Gen X “come from a point of view of midnight opening, full price games, console base… [they] want to get everything they possibly can, get as much juice out of that lemon as possible. Whereas you look at Gen Z, who live in a world of platforms… games don’t end, but social and community becomes a massive part of their DNA. So they want to be a part of a community where they’re able to say, “I’m the most informed. I know most about this game.”
“We started realizing, ‘this is great data. We should put this out, give it to everybody, and show how the shift is.’ What we’re doing is now looking at it and going: when we think about growing IGN Entertainment, what are the things that we realize Gen Z are now leaning towards? Where are the areas the business is shifting?”
The insights and segmentation from the report will be used to inform the firm’s Imagine AI targeting tool, and further analysis of the data will be published later in the year. A summary of the report is viewable at generationsinplay.com, from where the full version can be downloaded.
