Game On: As Kids Move to Gaming, Creators and Parents Race to Keep Up
When Swedish programmer Markus “Notch” Persson put together the first version of “Minecraft” over a weekend more than a decade ago, he couldn’t have predicted where it would lead.
The game allows players to build, craft, fight and destroy landscapes in their own pixelated worlds. Since its release in 2011, “Minecraft” has become the bestselling video game of all time, selling over 300 million copies and scoring a $2.5 billion acquisition from Microsoft in 2014. It’s spawned an interactive series available on Netflix as well as a live-action movie set for 2025.
As of 2024, roughly 21% of the game’s 170 million monthly active users are aged 15 years or younger — and YouTube videos about “Minecraft” have been streamed on the Alphabet-owned platform more than 1 trillion times.
The days of gaming being a niche in the world of children’s entertainment are no more. For creators looking to reach children where they are, video games — on consoles, mobile devices, tablets and computers — have become essential.
At the same time, YouTube videos of people live streaming their playthroughs have become a widely watched genre on the platform, especially among its youngest viewers. Gaming has become so vital to the kids entertainment ecosystem that studios and networks have ventured into online games like “Roblox” to position movie billboards and other promotional materials.
As TheWrap previously reported, in the new world of kids entertainment, children are pivoting away from linear and migrating to YouTube. But they’re also shifting to gaming, which continues to grow as a substantial part of how kids consume media and entertainment.
“It’s really rare to find a piece of kids’ content that only works on linear or only works on YouTube,” Vanessa Brookman, general manager of kids, global streaming and international networks for Cartoon Network, told TheWrap. “If it’s a good idea for kids, it will work on linear, it will work on YouTube, it will work in streaming, it will work in gaming.”
But just like social and YouTube content before it, creating a gaming strategy isn’t as easy as copying and pasting characters onto a Candy Crush knockoff. Here’s why gaming is so vital to some of the biggest players in children’s television and why this space raises concerns when it comes to children’s safety.
Video games are where Gen Alpha are
Mobile and tablet games, as well as video games, account for the third and fourth most-popular ways children consume media, according to a study by Precise TV and Giraffe Insights. Of the children surveyed, 55% said that they recently played a mobile or tablet game, and 44% said they recently played a video game. Of the 190.6 million people the Entertainment Software Association found played video games in 2024, 24% of them were under the age of 18.
Sara DeWitt, SVP and General Manager of PBS Kids, has noticed that kids are more likely to watch short-form content or play mobile games when they’re holding a phone. When they’re on a computer, streaming videos and playing video games are far more popular activities.
Gaming is such an essential part of PBS Kids that the network released a specialty PBS Kids Games app available on both tablets and mobile devices, which includes over 280 games. PBS also takes “cold pitches” for games in the same way it takes pitches for shows in its content submission portal.
“People pitch us games because we have a huge gaming library and a really robust audience in games,” DeWitt said.
Fred Rogers Productions, which is behind such hits as “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” and “Alma’s Way,” has been making what it calls interactive content since 2002, which has expanded the audience for its new shows. The late Mister Rogers always prioritized how new technology could be used to help educate children.
“For a young child, they want to experience the stuff that they love — the shows, characters and stories,” Ellen Doherty, chief creative officer for Fred Rogers Productions, told TheWrap. “Games are a great way to engage kids in problem-solving and immerse them in a world that is story-driven and learning-driven.”
The production company has tried to ensure that the lessons and themes from each of their shows appear in their respective games. For example, the math-focused “Odd Squad” always features equations in its games, and the “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” spinoff “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” often focuses on social and emotional learning, as well as life lessons.
“We don’t just port things from one place to another … We are designing for that experience and making the most of what you can do with a website versus a game versus a TV show versus a podcast,” Doherty explained. “When there’s new ways to tell a story differently — which you can do in games — that’s exciting.”
Gaming is more than just brand awareness
“Roblox,” a 20-year-old online gaming platform that allows players to program and play games built by other users, is an example of a game that entertainment companies are leveraging to expand their marketing reach.
When Cartoon Network first launched its “Game On” expansion of “Roblox” in 2022, it was largely seen as a tool for fans to engage with each other, and for players to interact with the network’s characters in one of their favorite games.
But as Cartoon Network’s expansion continued, team members started to notice the ways certain players were using the company’s characters.
“It’s almost like early development,” Brookman said. “You’re getting to see people’s creative processes and thoughts really early on. Then, if you like it, you can bring them back into the process and formalize the relationship.”
Cartoon Network also collaborated with Warner Bros. Pictures to use “Roblox” last year to promote “Wonka,” by featuring billboards of the movie inside the game. Both Cartoon Network and Warner Bros. Pictures share Warner Bros. Discovery as their parent company. And when Cartoon Network launched “The Heroic Quest of the Valiant Prince Ivandoe,” that came with a premiere inside of “Roblox.”
“If you’re doing well in ‘Roblox,’ then you can also talk about the games on YouTube, and the audience will start to talk about the games on YouTube,” Brookman explained. “So everything expands the whole.”
That leads into another segment of children’s entertainment that’s massively popular: gaming content, longform videos of YouTubers playing video games and talking to their viewers as they play through.
In 2020, YouTube Gaming had its best year to date, producing more than 100 billion hours in watch time and over 40 million active gaming channels. During that year, “Minecraft” and “Roblox” were responsible for 201 billion views and 75 billion views, respectively.
“It’s hard for an older generation to wrap their heads around the fact that these kids are just spending so much time watching these videos,” Eric Berger, CEO of Common Sense Networks told TheWrap. “But if you talk to these kids, what they’re trying to get across is that it’s no different than Mom and Dad watching a basketball game.”
The risks of gaming
Gaming as a whole may be essential to the modern kid’s media diet, but that doesn’t mean it’s a risk-free bet. The projects can’t last forever due to their technical limitations. Because of that, companies and creators have to make careful calculations about how much to invest in a game, and for how long.
At the same time, the gaming market around children’s entertainment isn’t as robust as it once was. The number of Americans playing video games has dropped from 212.6 million in 2023 to 190.6 million in 2024. However, overall gaming consumption is still up over 16% compared to 2019, the year before the COVID-19 bubble.
“The kids gaming market, both console and mobile, has been shrinking outside of ‘Roblox,’” Chris Williams, founder and CEO of Pocket.watch, a digital-first studio that helps turn YouTube family channels into franchises, told TheWrap. The past two years have seen mass layoffs in the gaming industry as the inflated interest in gaming from the pandemic has dissipated.
There are also issues associated with “Roblox,” a platform that still struggles to make users money, Williams said. Some industry executives have safety concerns about the game. “We want to feel more comfortable, particularly with ‘Roblox,’ about its commitment to child safety before going full on in there,” he said.
In October, “Roblox” announced new child safety measures, including a parental control that requires permissions for children under the age of 13 to use the chat function and protections that prohibit children under nine years old from playing certain games. The restrictions are commonplace when it comes to most children-focused spaces on the internet.
When indie games like “Roblox” or “Minecraft” are created, they’re rarely done so with a young audience in mind. That often means game makers don’t add basic measures often used to protect children until later.
There’s also the YouTube gaming ecosystem to consider. A cottage industry has emerged around YouTubers and talents on Amazon-owned Twitch sharing their live feeds as they play games, and just like the games themselves, the content is rarely created with children in mind. That means a video that may look safe to parents may actually feature a streamer using language that’s too mature for children, or in some of the worst cases, full of racial slurs.
“They’re moving into creator-driven content that is either coming up in their feeds or they’re hearing about through a friend, and this is not big-studio marketing,” Berger said. “‘Roblox’ content, ‘Minecraft’ content that they’re streaming on YouTube, is not going to come from a big studio or streaming service.”
Between the endless scrolling of streaming services and the algorithmic randomness of YouTube, the volatility of gaming is just another way in which the current state of children’s entertainment is the Wild West.
“Enough time has passed now that there’s another shift that’s happening or about to happen, and who knows what this next generation of parents are going to want for their kids and what sort of safeties they’re going to want to put in place,” Cyma Zarghami, MiMo Studios founder and former president of Nickelodeon, told TheWrap.
Read TheWrap’s previous reports on the future of kids entertainment below:
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