Masters of Risk | Season 3 Ep. 4: The Game Changers for "Gamers"

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Stewart Webster   00:00:01

Welcome to Masters of Risk. Today, we're stepping into one of the most dynamic and often misunderstood frontiers of media, gaming, -- with billions of people around the world playing games every day, the opportunity to reach highly engaged audiences has never been greater, yet it remains one of the most underused channels in advertising. Joining us is Dr. Jonathan Stringfield of Microsoft and author of Get in the game, how to level up your business with gaming, esports and emerging technologies. Jonathan holds a PhD in sociology and has built his career helping brands and platforms navigate the rapidly evolving digital landscape. In this episode, we unpack the risk and rewards of in-game advertising, explore the changing demographics of gamers and discuss the implications of privacy, platform control and technology on the future of attention. Jonathan, thank you for joining us today.

Jonathan Stringfield   00:01:47

Thank you very much for having me. Very excited to have this conversation.

Stewart Webster   00:01:50

I'm sure it will be a great conversation. And before diving into it, can you tell us a bit about your background, your role at Microsoft and how you came to focus on gaming and advertising?

Jonathan Stringfield   00:02:01

For sure. So at Microsoft, I oversee a business strategy, analytics and trust for our advertising business at large. So that means a lot of things, but one of the primary duties I have is working with a lot of our publishing platforms and services across Microsoft on their monetization strategies, particularly as it pertains to advertising. I've been at Microsoft for just about a year. I come by way of the Activision Blizzard acquisition. So for folks that are rudimentally familiar with kind of the entertainment industry, that acquisition happened in October of 2023, whereas I was part of the leadership team of the advertising business at Activision Blizzard, one of the largest game publishers in the world. And by merit of post-acquisition, obviously made sense to kind of, one, bring a lot of the DNA that we were building on the gaming side into the advertising business at large, but then two, to try to really figure out how all these things connect up. And that's a lot of the work that we're doing today, though. Obviously, I'm pretty biased towards our gaming proposition, a lot of what we have going on there, understanding that, one, not only is it a lot of my background, but two, it's obviously a really exciting place that I think at Microsoft, we have a unique advantage. So that's kind of the mean potato where I am now. Prior to that, I think as mentioned before, I was very early on like Twitter and Facebook and what have you, really at like the kind of days where we were trying to convince advertisers like what this whole social media thing is. So the point being that a lot of my work largely through an empirical lens has been working with top brands, advertisers or what have you and helping them contextualize new technologies because Again, these are things that folks want to invest in. There's obviously a lot of consumer interest, but the connection between business goals and consumer interest and how advertising fits in isn't always clear. And a lot of my job is to kind of unpack that for folks.

Stewart Webster   00:03:48

Absolutely. And the world of advertising and gaming, it's expanding every day, right? There's like a rapid expansion going on. And out of 8 billion people on the planet, 3.2 billion are gamers actually, just to put that number in perspective. And so that means that 40% of the world is gaming, which is a massive opportunity for advertisers. What do people still get wrong about the gaming industry, especially in terms of its potential as a media and engagement platform?

Jonathan Stringfield   00:04:17

Yes. I mean I think the -- even just the scale of it and what that means in terms of the demographics that they're in is probably one of the most pervasive areas where folks tend to get hung up because as a practical example, like a lot of the time when I talk about the audiences that we have in gaming, I actually don't even use the term gamers because gamers in and of itself is like so laden with like misconceptions that like the minute I say that word, like folks immediately start thinking about like young men, and they're thinking pretty exclusively about them like playing in their rooms, it's dark, they have the headset on, like they're playing consoles, blah,blah, blah, blah. And for a lot of brands, like, yes, absolutely, like you want to reach that demographic and there's something we said about that, and we're all excited about Gen Z and so on and so forth. But then the reality is like if you kind of take a step back and you think about some -- it varies a little bit in terms of the amount, but like almost half the population of the planet playing games, just by law of big numbers, like it's not all like young men playing on consoles, like that just can't be. So when you look at the average demographic of a gamer, you find like, yes, the average age is, again, varies a little bit, 34 to 36, right? They're just as likely to identify as female as male, right? These are folks that have jobs and mortgages and so on and so forth. So like as you start to kind of like follow that little path of logic down, what you start to see is that the average demographic of a game player is the average demographic of the consumer just by merit of, again, that law of big numbers, but also just because like gaming isn't this niche thing. It's now something that is essentially blockbuster mainstream entertainment. And that's a lot of what we're trying to get out there that it's like in the same way that your brand may or may not have or your business or what have you, a strategy about how you integrate with television or movies or what have you, gaming is in that same tranche, not just because it's an upstart, is actually the largest form of entertainment in the world.

Stewart Webster   00:06:16

Wow, that's fascinating. And we often talk about multitasking. So I'm thinking about watching TV or exploring social media, you're able to multitask there. But gaming is different. Gaming is one of the few mediums where users' attention is fully engaged. So if you're playing a football video game and you're not focused, you might throw an interception or a fumble and that gives the opponent to a chance of score. In a game like Call of Duty, the stakes are even higher. It's a battle scenario where the outcome can mean life or death for your character. So not only do we have the users full attention, but there's also a strong emotional investment. What kind of opportunity does that give brands?

Jonathan Stringfield   00:06:59

Yes. I mean I think what you're kind of touching on is we talk about the size of the audience, and that speaks about breadth of the opportunity. And there's a lot of breadth there, right? Like it's hard to argue with 40% to 50% of the population in the world. But the real super power of gaming is actually the depth of it, right? And when we think about, like to my point before, in terms of like major forms of entertainment, how you integrate and so on and so forth, not only is gaming amongst those, but it's also highly specialized in terms of the depth of attention that it has with consumers. So like a practical example, like let's keep on this whole trend of like looking at second screening or what have you, like fundamentally, like if you're going to put an advert in a game, what you're brokering on is some degree of attention, right? Like you are looking to relay some message to an individual to have some effect on their behaviors fundamentally, right? Like that's the goal. And so to do that, people not only have to see it, but they have to internalize it, right? So all this gets to like this rather amorphous term that we call attention. Now back in the early days, and like this is where like some of my background is relevant to kind of things going on in gaming, like, again, very, very early on at Facebook and Twitter and whatnot, there was this concept that was talked about a lot that like as folks were starting to get a little bit worried or nervous about like dual screening and fragmented attention, like this is like 2010 or something like that when like, yes, this has been happening forever in terms of consumer behaviors, but like advertisers at that point, we were getting wise of the fact that like, no, people aren't robots that like get home for work sitting for their TV and like tune into that for like 6 hours. They have smartphones. They have other stuff going on. So like then this whole thing about second screening became very kind of contentious and like what this basically meant was like, again, kind of what we all do, like you're sitting on your couch, like, yes, maybe you're watching something, but also you got your phone in front of you, right? And then the social media platforms, we talk a lot about like, again, where was the attention focused for the most part that, let's again say, 2010-ish in terms of the era. Yes, I'm sitting there and watching TV. I have Facebook or Twitter open on my phone. And realistically, the argument I'm making is I'm paying attention to that mobile phone. Now today, things haven't changed that much except for the relay of the content, right? So like you're probably still sitting there and you're watching television, but it's probably not linear TV, right? -- very likely connected TV. So fine, okay. So that's changed. And I still my phone out. And maybe I'm still going through social media or what have you, and the platforms have changed quite a bit, obviously, between here and there. But to your point, it's also just as likely, if not more likely, I'm playing a game. Now that same dynamics there in terms of where am I paying attention. But again, to your point, even if like -- it doesn't even have to be a Call of Duty, like let's say, it's a candy crush, there are mechanics that I have to engage with, right? Like I can't just kind of idly flip past people's vacation photos and what have you. I have to interact with what's going on there. So what kind of happens and why this is important for marketers is like some of these same fundamental human behaviors are there, but the way in which the content is constructed, it has become that much more better at actually garnering that attention that's realistically what they're looking for. And this is really the superpower of gaming, whether it's in combination of multiple types of devices that might be going on. But certainly, in the case if you're sitting down and doing that as a dedicated activity, you're just going to be locked in that much more. And therefore, when done in the right way, it becomes that much better of a platform to convey that message that you're trying to impart upon someone.

Stewart Webster   00:10:27

And I kind of want to understand in-game advertising and cross collaboration. I was actually looking at Microsoft's Forza Motorsport, which is a car racing game, and I was actually blown away by the types of cars you can race. So they have Porsche, BMW, Corvettes. There are actually over 500 different cars that you can customize and drive. But what really caught my eye is the specificity. So not only can you drive the Porsche, but you can drive the 2023 Porsche 911 GT3 RS. This is very specific. And it kind of gives the car enthusiasts an opportunity to see that car, really experience that car. And I would say that the details are so vivid that if you're in the market for one of these race cars, you can actually use this game to go shopping and kind of test drive these different cars. Not only that, but I saw a lot of cross collaboration. So for example, there's the 007 James Bond car pack that you can purchase in this game, and that gives you an opportunity to drive the 1964 Aston Martin DB 5 that James Bond drove in the famous series. There's also the LEGO Speed Champions and the Hot Wheels series. So there is these massive collaborations and direct advertisements with other companies. And in-game advertising, it might feel new to some people, but hasn't that been around for decades now? And how has it evolved from the early days of Pong, for example, to today's immersive ad experiences?

Jonathan Stringfield   00:11:58

Yes. I would actually say for about as long as there have been video games, there have been ads in them. Now again, like some of those ads were just ads for like the developer's next video game. But nonetheless, it was an ad, right? So like the classic example is this game called Adventure, which was obviously like a very early on one for Atari and like the developer put in basically an ad that was an Easter egg within there for his next game, right? But like the core idea was there that like there was recognition that like there is space for messaging within these. In that case, like obviously a little hand fisted. But as we started to build out these worlds, there was apparent that there was an opportunity here, not entirely unlike, again, other forms of entertainment, whether it's television movies or what have you. And so what's happened then is like there's been kind of these -- I guess you could call it waves, but I don't think there's like any kind of regularity to it. So less like this nice even sigmodal, but like kind of these peaks and what have you in terms of like when interest came into games. But I think what you've seen in recent years is that there's been a confluence of factors that has readily brought this much more to the attention in the forefront of how folks are thinking about it. So like one of which is basically just how these games are constructed with Internet connectivity and what have you, right? So again, to your example, like in A Forza or perhaps like old like football games or what have you, like there were ads in some of those. But like the trick is like they weren't connected to the Internet. They weren't like dynamic environments. What that meant is you had to go strike a deal with whomever, right? And you code in your game, and that's cool because like it actually like mimicked what you'd expect to see in real life, and this is a part that we'll come back to because it's an important one. But like that's it. And like that's not really how like brands like to do sponsorships. That's like -- it's just very orthogonal in terms of like how they would actually do a deal in terms of like marks and rights or advertising or what have you to have something like hard coding the game forever, right? Like you can boot up some of these old games like the psycho Genesis and you're still going to see an ad for whatever. And I guess, maybe that brand got great value out of it because you can still see it like 2 or 3 decades later, but nonetheless, that's like not how we like to transact. So now we have Internet connectivity. We have programmatic technology. We have all these wonderful things that we can make it a little bit more dynamic. Great. So like that's one thing. The second is, to the point before, access for games, both in terms of devices, i.e., cell phones, but then even the design of the games have gotten much more inclusive to encompass some 40% to 50% of the population. So not only can you start buying ads a little bit more like how you would like or sponsorships or what have you, but then also the breadth of the audience kind of matched what you would want to see for any given buy where there, again, large forms of entertainment, social media and so on. And then I think the third piece is in terms of like games resonating with the cultural zeitgeist, like there is something to be said about like we're quickly getting to the generation of folks that have grown up playing video games their entire life. Like I myself and a good example of that, I'm ostensibly within the prime demographic of consumers for the most part. And like I grew up playing video games and I play them now and now I play them with my kids and I have a mortgage and I buy stuff and so on and so forth, right? So like there's a lot of people like me were like we're just kind of in that mode where these are folks that have been like well cultivated to this as a form of entertainment and therefore, like a much more likely way to reach them. So you have that plus like look at things like the adoption of video game IP to television and movies or what have you that like you're starting to see stories that are formerly interactive appear elsewhere to the point of even if you've never played a video game in your life, you might know the story of fallout or the -- last of us or what have you by merit of this appearing otherwise. So like you have all these factors where you have like the scale of the audience is there, it's getting easier to buy, and it's increasingly culturally relevant across a number of different axes. And what was before something where folks would just kind of like ebb and flow a little bit in terms of investments is now getting to a place where, again, in my mind, biased as it is, but I think increasingly within the broader business world, folks are starting to see this as pretty essential or something that you kind of need to understand and get involved with by merit of how it continues to grow and continues to influence consumers across all of these different channels.

Stewart Webster   00:16:09

And you brought up a good point about the dynamic environment. So I guess if you can explain to our audience what exactly is dynamic advertisement -- and from my understanding, in order for dynamic or personalized ads to work well, you need data on the user. So location data, preferences, maybe even their age and identity. How much of a threat do privacy regulations pose to the future of in-game advertising if it's becoming more dynamic and it's focused on these more customized, personalized ads?

Jonathan Stringfield   00:16:40

Sure. So like let's look at this at like 2 ends of the polarity in terms of like customer data and what have you. So on the one hand, I think there are going to always be like spaces within gaming where folks have subscriptions log in, there's known information about them and there's a good environment and how this shows up is going to be a little bit different which way to kind of serve an ad as you would on social media, what have you, but with all of the requisite protections put in place by various regulations, sovereign nations and so on and so forth. So there's -- on the one hand, there's always going to be places where it's going to be like a pretty straight play that like, yes, whatever the dynamics are within the ad industry, we're going to do that. We're going to be adherent. And we're still going to find a way to like make this a good experience principally for our players, but also make sure that advertisers get the audiences they want. But like that will be a little bit different in terms of like will that be like, again, just showing up within the game play experience versus the load up versus like something like the Xbox dashboard versus like some other like entryway into the portal, like all that's going to be a little bit variable. But like as an aside, what we're touching on there is like we're saying in-game advertising. And what that can mean is like a lot of different stuff. And then therefore, like how we'll think about user privacy and what have you is going to be fairly differential across those. So like on the one hand, I think there's definitely a world where we kind of navigate that successfully, not entirely different than any other digital platform that is within digital advertising. Now let's look to the other extreme, right, which is kind of an interesting case. We're like, okay, let's say, for the sake of argument that the regulatory environment gets so tight that all of these things that like candidly, a lot of digital media is brokered on today, which is essentially information about you, just isn't practicable, right, to the point of like a lot of the stuff is kind of cutting down, right? I still think gaming is in a really good and interesting spot there. So like let's take an example, you brought up Call of Duty before. One of the opportunities that we've had in the past is that you can be in this environment and Call of Duty takes place in a bunch of different settings. But for the most part, it's kind of like near future or futuristic environments, and I'm running around this area and I see a billboard. And boy, when I see a billboard, I expect to see an advertisement, don't I, right? Now when I see an advertisement, if I'm like in this world, right, and I'm trying to get focused and trying to immerse myself, like it probably makes sense if I see a brand that I would expect to see, right? So like me as a human, as a consumer out in New York City, right? Like I'm going to see a billboard, I expect to see a brand I know and so on. So if we can bring that into the game environment, that's like a net win, right, for -- not just for the advertiser, but again, also for the game player if it is done in a way that helps improve immersion. So also to your point about Forza, one of the reasons that those things are -- or those types of partnerships are so successful is because, yes, like ostensibly, like it's a way for, in that case, the car manufacturers to highlight the product. But because it's so like natural to the environment, it actually improves the immersion that you can really have the touch and feel of these cars, like that's actually something that demonstrably improves the gameplay experience. And like not every type of partnership or advertisement is going to be to that tier, but that is kind of what we want to go for as kind of the best case. So then returning back to this point about the billboards. In a world where I'm walking around New York City, there's that billboard that I see on wherever, Fifth A or what have you, like it doesn't know anything about me, but it's placed there because of the context of it being on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. -- right? May see where I'm going with this, that like in the same way, if you know the context of the game and who plays, and again, we do have a very good idea of like what demographics play what games and in what ways and so on and so forth, and this is definitely something we work with marketers on. We can get very contextually tight on putting the right type of advertisement in the right environment for the right player in a way that will be accretive to the brand. So it's a long way of saying that like in a world where like everything gets locked down in terms of regulation, and we have to go back to like the olden days of contextual advertising, Here, too, I think we have a really strong and interesting foot to stand on in these gaming environments based upon the fact that like we know who plays it, we know good ways to implement it, and we know a way that we can still be effective in terms of communications even without having exhaustive information of the person playing the game.

Stewart Webster   00:20:57

Yes, there's clearly a lot of complexity and thought that goes behind this here. Now we talked a lot about the software gaming, I guess, the virtual user interface, the environment, the graphics. But gaming runs on hardware, and that means chips, consoles and cloud infrastructure. Actually, one of my kids is an aspiring pilot. And last week, we went out to purchase Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. And I quickly found out that my computer is outdated. It had an old graphics card. So we had to go out and purchase a new computer with an NVIDIA GeForce 5070 chip, one of the latest and greatest chips. I'm mentioning this because that was virtually impossible to do in 2020 because we had the supply chain shutdown and these chips weren't available, which I'm sure affected the gaming industry. So do you ever have to think about supply chain disruption or system outages as a business risk for gaming?

Jonathan Stringfield   00:21:52

100%. And I mean, I think the example you brought up is a good one. And it also underpins a lot of where I think you'll see increasingly strategies are moving, not necessarily for game advertising, but for gaming in general, which is to say that like it's putting a lot of burden on the consumer in your case, you had to go out and you bought the software and then you bought a computer and then you bought like this very expensive graphic like 50- 70, that's not cheap. Like you had to go out and buy all that stuff to operate that software. And like, look, there's always going to be some percentage of individuals who are going to do that, right? Like so I'm kind of like on the enthusiast level, like, yes, no problem. I'm going to do that. But like maybe my father will, right? And like you who's maybe not playing as many games as I like, you did it because you had the necessity, but that really wouldn't be your bread and butter. And so in that world, that's where things like cloud technologies and streaming and what have you, like Microsoft as a whole is highly bullish on this, not just because of Azure and because like it's very kind of synergistic with like some of the other businesses within Microsoft, but because realistically, that's how we see that a lot of potential game game behaviors are going to go that like people want to be able to play a game burden free on the device they want, when they want, with whom they want without all the overhead. And realistically, the only way to do that is through cloud streaming. So like you've even seen probably some of our consumer marketing that we've done on Xbox has all been like Xbox, like every screen is an Xbox. And like that's exactly what it's talking about that like you went through all that rigor road to play that game, but you also could have got a subscription to game pass and played that on your phone, right? Like that was also another option that was like totally applicable. Now I don't think your kid would have been jazzed about playing flights someone's phone, but in theory, that was totally possible. So on the one hand, in terms of behaviors, like we want to try to like get these potential supply chain snags away from the consumer base when and where possible just because -- not necessarily because we have like anything beyond just wanting to make a good experience for the consumer and to have it open to as many people as possible. But realistically, that does kind of tap into the fact that like a large part of my work, even though like I'm not focused on pure game development or what have you, but I work closely with our game studios and our Xbox platform or what have you, is I really need to understand the gaming business and like all the things that can be disruptive, inclusive of supply chain, but then also just larger macroeconomic factors, like gaming as a business is super challenging. It is super difficult. It's like hard to make a hit game, and it is hard to like align science and art in a way that's fun in a fairly repeatable way, like all of this is super, super hard. And then you have the overture of like, look, we're in a recession, like consumer spending is down. Things like spend on entertainment is likewise going to go down. So like understanding how this impacts what types of audiences are going to come into our experiences, not just from a studio standpoint, but even from mine in terms of an advertiser standpoint is super important. So like that aperture in terms of like the risks that have to be implemented into our thinking can get just about as wide as you want because it is this giant global business that is like at its core, a technology business.

Stewart Webster   00:25:08

Wow, that's fascinating. And you're right, as soon as I installed the simulator and I opened the program, I saw the Xbox advertisement. And then also with the new computer, it comes with a Game Pass. And I didn't realize how integrated Xbox and the Microsoft and the Game Pass -- how integrated that is. So -- and there's also a lot of upselling...

Jonathan Stringfield   00:25:29

Let's talk about it next time before you go out and a bunch of -- exactly hooked up.

Stewart Webster   00:25:33

Yes. So there's a lot of upselling there, too. And I consider purchasing the Xbox, but it actually did not get approved by my wife. So we had to go out and purchase a computer instead. But with all the recent advances in technology, just thinking about generative AI, spatial computing, what's your take on where advertising and gaming are headed next?

Jonathan Stringfield   00:25:54

Yes. I mean there could be a large conversation we could have about things like generative AI in general. And obviously, that's kind of like the hot topic as of late. But like I think a few things, like one, I'm in the camp, which I think a lot of other folks are that like the extent to which this continues to be a technology which enables folks to do more than they could do before, right? And again, like this goes from like small advertisers now can make assets and rapid translations of their advertisements kind of turnkey in our platforms, like great. Like that is something that just inherently provides value, right? On the other hand, we think about even things in terms of game development, like where there's spots and dots of that being incorporated, I'm going to butcher where I got this from and maybe even the quote itself, but like someone noted that like as your costs go down, your capacity for risks go up, meaning that anywhere there is a place where we can save money on development to then do what we want to do best, which is to make cool and creative experiences, that too is a net win. So like, again, there's a couple of different angles that we could look at this. But I think one of the things that I've been kind of pushing folks a lot on is like, in particular, in the marketing world, even the broader business world, folks are still just trying to kind of reconcile like, oh, everyone's talking about this Gen AI stuff. I don't know what to do with it. It seems important. I haven't incorporated it. Am I being left behind? What are we doing? What's up? Is the Sky Blue and so on? And the point that I kind of try to push on them is like, look, if you think about what this is supposed to do on a consumer basis, and again, there's a lot of different thesis around this, but I think the major one is, eventually, we're going to get to this world where we have like these AI agents that work on our behalf to do a bunch of stuff, all the way to the point that maybe like the Internet itself doesn't even have a UI anymore. It's like realistically, we're just kind of like talking with computers. Interesting. And again, like maybe we'll get there, maybe we won't -- I don't know, like we probably don't have enough time here to like fully unpack that. But in this world where in theory, I'm supposed to have a more kind of effective with an A, like a more kind of like emotionally engaged relationship with this platform, it is important for us to think about and look at other platforms, other technologies where folks are emotionally engaged. And again, this is where I kind of bring up gaming for folks that like if you want to think about what it means to like be deeply, deeply like not just kind of use a technology or like a technology, but love a technology, like gaming is probably a good example of that, not the least of which, how most consumers think about AI in general, all of their thinking comes from games. like that's generally where folks have had some degree of interaction with an artificial intelligence is through the lens of games. So that's a long way of saying that on the one hand, I think it has a lot of interesting upside in terms of how we can empower folks, both in the creation of games, the creation of marketing content they're in. But then also gaming is a really interesting lens for us to kind of understand it more generally from the consumer perspective. So you think about that plus other platforms in which it may come through in terms of spatial technology and what does this mean for augmented reality and what have you and how does that impact gameplay experiences versus how we consume information, like all of that starts like cascade fairly quickly. But all benched, I think, in this core premise that for us to really understand what's next, we have to understand what's important to people today. And that's why like, yes, I'm a gaming fan, but I think gaming is important because it truly matters to folks as a technology platform, and it's how we've been learning about technology since computers came to be.

Stewart Webster   00:29:31

And just to wrap up here, the latest games are extremely impressive, but nothing beats those nostodic games that come from the past. And I got to say for me, it's Golden Eye 007 on N64. To me, that has to be one of the greatest games of all time. And I'm just thinking about the split screen multiplayer with your friends and everyone is yelling at the screen. And of course, we have that universal role that you can't play with odd job. He was like the precode character. And it kind of -- it wasn't just a game, right? It was kind of like a right of passage as well. And it's amazing to think about how far we've come from that time to now where we have like these more immersive data-driven games. So just for fun, what's your favorite Estagei game?

Jonathan Stringfield   00:30:14

Yes. I'm like notoriously bad at favorites. I'm just like one of those folks that can like never just like I'll give you a list of 10, but never one. Gaming, I always have one in the chambers, as you might suspect. And it's actually a game called Ultima 7. So this is a computer RPG, I don't know when it came out, early '90s, I think somewhere on this. So it's like Ultima Series by a gentleman named Richard Guyrot, fascinating individual. He's been to space. He's been at the bottom of the ocean. He's like the father of modern like role-playing games. And like this really seminal series and like, again, in terms of its historical significance, like there's a ton there. It also like was one of the basis of like semi-permanent worlds and what have you. And that, again, from a technological standpoint, really, really interesting. That's not the reason I pick it. Like the reason that I pick that is because that's a game that I used to play when I was a young man with my mother. And like that was our common point of -- like, of course, I had other points of connection with my mother, but like this is like a really important common connection to me. And so like when I think about things like in the same way when you're talking about Golden Eye, you weren't talking about like all the technological sophistication with, you talked about the relationships you had with other people through it. And same with this, but in this case, like how I had like a bond with my family. And I think those are the most important ones in terms of like I think with any effective media or any effective art, it's not just about the media itself, it's about how it connects other folks together. And again, games are meant to be played with others. And I think that by even just that rubric, understanding how it brings us together is what makes it powerful and also what makes it poyant for us to think about, again, in conversations like this for business, for technology, for what have you.

Stewart Webster   00:31:52

Gaming is no longer a niche. It's a global force shaping how people connect, express themselves and experience brands. As we heard today, the real risk isn't just about entering the space too early. It's about underestimating where attention is already going. From evolving privacy laws to supply chain fragility and from content sensitivity to the exponential pace of tech innovation, the gaming world is a proving ground for the future of advertising. It demands not just creativity, but foresight and a willingness to engage where audiences are most present and most immersed. A big thank you to Jonathan for joining us and sharing his insights. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to like, share and leave a review. Thanks for listening to Masters of Risk. I'm Stuart Webster, and we'll see you next time.