The Sunday Story: Video Game Economics (It's Not Play Money)

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4.5 • 52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 9 June 2024

⏱️ 31 minutes

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Summary

Can you get a college scholarship for playing video games? Are they becoming more accessible? Will forever games really last... forever? Wailin Wong, co-host of The Indicator from Planet Money, joins us to discuss the economics of gaming and efforts to make the industry sustainable in the wake of mass layoffs.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the Sunday story I'm Aisha Roscoe and I'm going to be honest with y'all when I'm not working I do like to try to relax and zone out and just game.
0:12.0	Oh wait, wait, I do it on the weekends with my kids.
0:16.0	Oh my, oh yes, no!
0:19.0	I won, I won, I won, I won!
0:22.0	That was pretty good. And at night after I put the kids to bed, I fire up the Nintendo Switch.
0:27.0	And it's just me and Princess Peach.
0:32.0	I call the case.
0:34.4	Oh my goodness.
0:36.4	Ah!
0:39.4	In the game we're in this theater that's been taken over by these bad dark entities and she's using her power,
0:47.0	the power of Sparkle to fight the bad guys and make the world a little bit brighter. Gheme!
0:54.0	I don't know about that one.
0:57.0	That was tough.
0:58.0	I love it.
1:02.0	And I'm not alone. By one estimate the video game industry made about
1:07.3	262 billion dollars last year that's more than revenue from the global box office and music
1:15.2	industry combined and it's not just a money-making machine but it's something of a
1:21.1	national pastime.
1:22.9	A 2023 report estimated that about 65% of Americans play video games.
1:28.9	But despite all this, making these games,
1:32.1	it's very expensive, and the cost are often felt in human terms.
1:36.2	Since the beginning of 2023 over 20,000 video game workers have been laid off.
	...

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