Play
Play isn’t just fun and games — it’s a serious business, and its future will impact sectors spanning food, spirits, sports, streaming, toys, retail and more. What will that mean for the ways we watch, shop, and have fun?
Play isn’t just fun and games — it’s a serious business, and its future will impact sectors spanning food, spirits, sports, streaming, toys, retail and more.
But the future of play faces multiple inflection points, driven by forces like technology, climate change, and even the emphasis on competition over fun and fairness.
What will that mean for how people socialize and bond, and how brands support the ways they play, watch and shop? How will traditional sports continue their pipeline of players and fans in a world where esports and extreme sports become college scholarship pathways? What is considered safe and fair when it comes to tapping the human genome to level the playing field? And how could a shift in work-life balance change how play fits into our lives?
Raising these disparate questions and hypotheticals is all a means of getting us thinking — because the implications are as broad and important as the ways we play.
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Read on as we talk with a pro video gamer and experts from Best Buy, Little League International, Gamewright, and Harvard Medical School and MIT about shifts taking place in participation, training and spending, and how they will shape society and brands, and how people shop and spend in the future.
Plus, we explore global public opinion from 50 countries.
- Jill Giefer, head of enterprise research and experience measurement, Best Buy — Why games will remain social even if we play apart
- Jeannail Carter, pro player and Twitch ambassador — How we’ll compete (and watch) in digital play
- Nina Johnson-Pitt, senior strategy executive, Little League International — How traditional sports can thrive in a changing world
- Jason Schneider, vice president, product development, Gamewright — What tabletop games need to win the parents of tomorrow
- George Church, Ph.D, geneticist and professor at Harvard University and MIT — What draws the line between play and competition
For full results, please refer to the annotated questionnaire.