Fast-forward to today, the video game industry has evolved into a global juggernaut, estimated to be worth more than $300 billion, according to a report by global professional services firm Accenture. This is more than the markets for movies and music combined.

In the Philippines, revenues of the gaming market have showed exponential growth in 2020 compared to the previous years, with the mobile games segment expected to continue growing in the next five years to as much as $1.52 billion in 2025.

Lloyd R. Manaloto, first vice-president and head of corporate marketing and strategy at Smart Communications, Inc., commented that while the numbers are staggering, the surge has been quite a recent development.

“In 2013, gaming was still very much a niche activity. It was not mainstream. But fast-forward to 2021, we see large crowds, large prize winnings, and this is tantamount to the effect of esports to our culture,” he said during BusinessWorld Insights on a session themed, “The Emerging Esports and Gaming Scene in the Philippines.”

According to Mr. Manaloto, there are around 45 million active gamers in the country now, a steady increase of 12.9% year on year since 2017. Around 63% of the online population, furthermore, watch gaming content, while 33% watch esports.

Esports, along with a number of other factors, have come into play to allow this growth to happen, Irymarc “Tryke” Gutierrez, co-founder and chief executive officer of gaming and e-sports talent agency Tier One Entertainment, said.

The accessibility of mobile games, particularly because of the lower entry price of smartphones compared to PCs or consoles, has boosted the video games industry to new heights, transforming it into a mainstream hobby.

“Being able to present gaming in a different way through streaming is also a big development,” he added.

“I remember casting a lot of Golden Plus games back then. The most we’ve had was around 25,000 concurrent viewers for Philippine viewership. But today, with Mobile Legends when our teams compete, 260,000 people are watching online. That alone shows how much audiences the audience and the industry have grown.”

This shift from a niche hobby into a more mainstream form of entertainment has also reduced much of the previously held stigma that used to surround the industry. Darren Paul Vitug, commissioner of the local e-sports league The Nationals and ethics committee head of the Philippine Esports Organization, shared how the stigma of gaming as an unproductive hobby is changing as more people come to understand it.

“When people say that gaming is an unproductive hobby, they’re actually referring to gaming addiction and not gaming per se. Obviously addiction and hobby are polar opposites, or at least they should be. People do still think that gaming by itself is an unproductive hobby, I would say that in general that’s how people think about things that they are unfamiliar with. We have to understand that productivity in a hobby is not absolute, and since a hobby is something you do to relax, to decompress, and to enjoy, it’s not really fair for anyone to say in behalf of someone that their hobby is unproductive,” he said.