Despite decades of mega revenue, gaming remains massively undervalued. 

Think about the combined cultural power of the music and film industries – the way they reflect and guide the social mores of contemporary life, how these two dominant art forms fill the crevices of our lives, the content of our small talk, the hours of our evenings. Then think about the sort of money that kind of ubiquity generates. Yet combine the worth of those two industries, and it is still less than what gaming generates.

“The game industry globally,” says Chelsea Rapp, Chairperson of the New Zealand Game Developers Association (NZDGA), “is in terms of revenue worth more than global film and global music combined.”

It is, she says, an industry that New Zealand investors are only just starting to discover. “The rest of the world has made incredible investment in this space, and has opened up spaces for small daily investors to get involved. Here in Aotearoa we’re only really starting to see the first equity investments in games in the last two years. But I think that’s only going to continue to grow.”

Gaming, she notes, is so much bigger than what might come instantly to mind – sitting down in front of an Xbox or Playstation or PC. Four out of five New Zealanders, she says, describe themselves as gamers. And some of the remainders just might not realise that they too fit within that category. “It’s also all of these incredible applications of game technology,” Rapp says, “and the gamification of everything, from education to fitness to medical rehab training, job simulations – really the kind of whole spread of opportunities for the sector.”

Gaming, says Megan Stals, a market analyst with Stake, is “far from the stereotypical images of teenage boys – almost everyone has played some kind of game on a mobile phone”. That growing dominance, Stals says, means that the gaming sector enables wider opportunities for investment than the likes of the well-known game developers and the big hardware suppliers – Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Nintendo (OTC:NTDOY), Sony (NYSE:SONY). As the sophistication of gaming continues to improve, it will drive, too, the growth of the technology required to supply it: semiconductor firms, datacentres, cloud-based technology. As WIRED puts it, the future of gaming is being powered by an “infrastructure arms race”.

It is a future that is also being consolidated by the rise and rise of esports – the finals of 2021’s Free Fire World Series attracted a record-breaking 5.4 million views – and the crossover success of series like HBO’s massive hit The Last of Us, which began life as a much-awarded video game. 

Similarly, emergent technologies like augmented and virtual reality found their initial impetus in the video game sector, says Rapp. And these days, she says, you are starting to see “greater application of those technologies in non-game spaces”. Recently, Unity, one of the most common game engines, became for the first time more widely used for industrial purposes than it was to power games themselves. “There’s an incredible expansion of businesses who are looking to these technologies – augmented reality, virtual reality, game engines, game tech – to expand their business opportunities and look for new business verticals,” Rapp says. 

It means that what Rapp calls “adjacent businesses” are starting to realise the benefits of gaming, and the technology it both requires and enables. When we spoke, the NZGDA had recently concluded its 2023 conference. Typically, she says, 500-600 people would come through the doors; this year there were over 1,000, in what she calls “incredible growth” for the conference itself. She forecasts similar growth for the New Zealand games industry at large, especially on the back of recent government initiatives like the $40 million put towards the Game Development Sector Rebate in the Government’s 2023 Budget.

“I love to compare it to Finland,” she says of the state of the industry in Aotearoa, and how big it could grow, “because Finland is about the same size as New Zealand, both geographically and in population, and their games industry is worth about $5 billion annually. We’re at about $400 million.” She suspects, she says, “that we are going to see a lot more investment in this space”.

The NZGDA also runs an annual investment event – at last year’s, in Auckland, more than 200 people attended, everyone from “really well-established investment firms to smaller everyday investors”. Stals says it “could be a good time” to join them, in a market that flourished during the height of the pandemic and is now rebounding from a sluggish 2022. For Rapp, the industry at large differs from its tech-sector cousins in that it doesn’t rely on “these entrepreneur personalities that are sort of evangelists for their product”.

There’s also an agility to the market that comes with almost all of us having the requisite hardware in our pockets at all times: our phones. Accordingly, mobile gaming, says Stals, is the most lucrative sub-sector within the industry. As Rapp says, “in games, you more often have people who just started as programmers, or designers, or artists, and had an idea that just really connected with their user base. And so you’re seeing small teams of four and five, making millions of dollars a year, having very little experience in business or scale or any of the things that you would typically associate with investment.”

When considering where to invest, Stals says, the well-known publishers of the big-budget, high-profile games can be a safe bet, but consider whether a publisher is too reliant on a single title; and that demand for hardware is potentially a more stable market than companies that rely on a churn of new releases for the majority of their revenue. The sector, she also notes, can suffer at the hands of regulators, with governments concerned about the amount of time young people are spending in front of screens. 

For Rapp, the future of gaming lies in “user-generated content”, games in which the players themselves can have a hand in crafting the worlds in which they play – games and spaces like Unreal Engine, Roblox (NYSE:RBLX) and Minecraft – and which afford opportunities for networking and social gaming. “Ultimately,” she says, “the internet makes us more and more connected every day. It’s never gone the other direction. And so companies and businesses that are creating tools to support that future, I think, have the greatest opportunity.”

As Stals says, the market can only grow as digital natives – those for whom socialising within Minecraft, say, is as commonplace as doing so on the playground – grow into adulthood. And for that generation, Rapp says, gaming already has the cultural centrality that older artforms do for older generations. “This is what they grew up with, right? It’s been ubiquitous since the day they were born. And so it’s become a part of their cultural zeitgeist and their cultural identity. And they’re looking at it as not just a form of cultural expression, but as a way to express themselves as individuals.”

Investing in that future only makes sense, Rapp says. “There’s really never been a better time to get into this space. And I’m certainly encouraging everyone… to really start to expand their repertoire of knowledge to include game business models, because I think we’re going to see more and more businesses that want to get into this space.”

A reflection on the Art Work series, and what we learnt from the artists we met.

For Art Work, we interviewed 10 artists across the motu. Our current poet laureate, choreographers, crocheters, multi-disciplinary artists and musicians shared their stories of what it takes to make work in Aotearoa in the current day. They gave us a rare insight into the process, and a rare look into their living and workspaces to demystify what it is to make art.

Those ten artists taught us many things about the way they work, and the wells they draw from to create that work. From the beauty of “cloaking” to the pleasure of taking a morning swim, the roads that these artists travel to bring their creations to us are as varied as their art. All of them, however, mentioned the importance of structure. Whether that is a regimented schedule, a job that allows them scope to create, or the whanau around them, that structure is more than just a frame. It’s support.

They also shared what would make it easier for them to make their art. That’s not to say that the mahi needs to be easier, but the barriers between them and getting to actually create could be lessened. A high trust model from funding bodies, a less metrocentric lens from those same funding bodies, a more robust investment in arts education at all levels were all mentioned.

Policy change, however, is also vital. We all live under the spectre of government policies, and artists are no different. In this election, only three parties – Act, Greens, and Labour – had visible arts policies. There are a number of artist-led groups advocating and campaigning for arts policies at this time, including Arts Makers Aotearoa, Arts Action Now, D.A.M.N, Artists Make Auckland, Te Taumata Toi Iwi, and Action Station Aotearoa. 

“We are just one group amongst a number of arts groups who are advocating and campaigning for arts rights at this time,” says Judy Darragh on behalf of Arts Makers Aotearoa. “We’re all very aware of the potential dangers we faced through this election, but it’s really heartening to see that there is action and solidarity from these groups.”

Arts Makers Aotearoa in particular have been working with the Regional Arts Network Aotearoa and Te Taumata Toi-a-Iwi on the Arts Action Now platform, holding wānanga with the arts community in order to dream up an Aotearoa Arts, Culture and Creativity Strategy. These discussions will play a crucial role in shaping a sector briefing for the next minister for arts and culture and any other relevant ministry. 

The systems that are currently in place overseas are not out of reach for New Zealand. We can see Ireland’s basic income scheme for artists, New York’s project to rebuild the city for artists, and closer to home, the new Australian cultural policy that centres the rights of artists. Similar pathways can be built here (and the recent passing of the Resale Royalty Bill shows that it’s nowhere close to impossible), but it takes more than just artists to advocate for themselves. Audiences have to as well.

“It’s wonderful to see Australia establishing an agency to look after artists’ rights. There is much in the Revive policy we can look to”, says Stephen Wainwright, chief executive of Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa. “Our government has made steps towards artists protections too – including the artist resale royalty scheme – but as a country we need to go further than this. Our research shows that artists continue to earn much less than the median salary for their creative work, meaning career sustainability is incredibly challenging. 

New Zealanders support arts, culture and creativity more than ever. They see the positive impacts in their communities every day – on health and wellbeing, building vibrant and connected places to live, supporting their identity, and so much more. Creative New Zealand supports moving away from an idea of artists being resilient and trying to get on with things and shifting towards valuing artists’ intellectual property and supporting them in more meaningful and sustainable ways, so that we make steps towards an Aotearoa where arts, culture and creativity truly thrives.” 

The stories these artists shared with us backs up, for better and for worse, the research carried out by Kantar Public on behalf of Creative New Zealand and NZ on Air. Although most of the interviewees work exclusively in the creative sector, many of them are juggling multiple jobs within that sector to make ends meet. Some worked far more than the standard 40 hour week, and others found their domestic responsibilities were barriers to their ability to carve out time to create.

Throughout Art Work, however, the big takeaway has been how important it is to value art, and the artists who make it. Value is an action, one that can be taken in many ways. To pay someone fairly for their mahi is valuing them. To engage with a piece of art honestly, and openly, is to value it. To share love for an art form, in an educational or social context, is to value it. To advocate to local MPs, politicians and decision makers about why art is important to you, is to value it. There is no time more important than the present, in the first 100 days after the election, to do this. Elected officials know that art matters to artists. They need to know its value to audiences.

Put simply: When you value something, you show how important it is to you. If we, as a country, value art, we show how important it is to us.

Since the series started, the 10 artists profiled for the series have exhibited work nationally and internationally, toured their work to festivals across the world, won awards and, in general, made work happen. They are just a drop in the bucket of what our artists are achieving. With more government support and investment, that bucket could be an ocean.

An Aotearoa with a flourishing arts sector is an Aotearoa that is flourishing, full stop. When our people have access to arts, culture and creativity, it doesn’t just widen their lens and their ability to comprehend what is possible, it fills that lens with beauty, with richness, and with complexity. When the arts are present in the education system not as an optional, not a hobby, but a core part of life that can turn into a lifelong passion, or even a career, the country as a whole flourishes. 

The arts sector is not an organ in the body, performing one function singularly. The arts sector is the lifeblood, flowing through everything we do. Our mental wellbeing, our economic vitality, our social connectivity – the arts play a crucial part in all of them. 

This series started off by asking the reader to think about a painting in a gallery, and to consider all the steps it took to get that painting there. We’ll end it in a similar place. Whenever you listen to a piece of music, watch a piece of choreography, or see a piece of public art on your commute, think of all the work that went into creating it – and how much more beautiful, and vibrant, our country could be if we had more of it.

Our artists are already world-leading. Our arts sector can be too.