A good measure of how the economy is doing, or an economic indicator, is what people do in their free time. For this blog post I chose the topic of video games, specifically E3. E3 is one of the biggest video game conferences in the United States where huge companies like Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony make announcements about their new gaming systems.  In today’s economy, video games make money at a much quicker rate movies do. “Grant Theft Auto V, by Rockstar Games  make $800 million in its first 24 hours,” quoted by Anya Kamenetz, a blog post writer from Fast Company. Many people assume Hollywood is the biggest entertainment industry in terms of making money for California. However, video games are the silent winner that many people overlook.

In 2012, Activision, the major video game company that created Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, revealed that it had hit $1 billion dollars in sales in just 15 days. The top grossing movie of all time, “Avatar, took two days longer to earn the same amount” (Kamenetz).

This graph shows the sales of video games from 2012 compared to the 2013. Looking closely one can see that at their peaks in December, sales from 2012 to 2013 have grown from $3.21 billion to $3.28 billion. Holiday season is the time when children know they can ask for the biggest present from the parents, so naturally the sales of video games in December greatly exceed the sale of video games any other time. If you look again at the graph, the points in the year of 2013 are slightly higher than the points from 2012, a clear economic indicator that the U.S. economy is steadily growing.

A convention that happens every year in the heart of Los Angeles is E3, home to one of the biggest video game, tech, and gadget shows. Polygon, one of the leading American websites online that informs its viewers about video game’s news, culture, and reviews, reported that some 48,000 people attended E3 this year, that’s 1.5% more people within the Los Angeles Conference Center than there was last year, a clear economic indicator that Los Angeles is not doing too bad for itself. Measuring an increase in video game purchases from year to year could be a good economic indicator; however having individuals wait hours in line just to go to a convention to hear when exactly the video games will come out e should reveal that the economy is doing well enough for individuals to sacrifice work time to attend this event.

More simply, people not only have the free time to play video games, but they also have the free time to spend money on tickets to the event. If the economy was not doing so well, individuals  Video gaming is one of the biggest chunks of entertainment-related sales, so naturally using it as an economic indicate whether our economy is progressing or regressing.

 

Nick Wu