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The Last Of Us proves that gamers are well capable of taking a bite out of other tech

The Last Of Us - left, the video game; right the TV show

Fearghal O'Connor

March 19 2023 02:30 AM

There may be all sorts of doom and gloom in the tech sector – but the relentless rise of video gaming, the hybrid between tech and entertainment, continues.

Anyone who watched HBO’s post-apocalyptic drama The Last Of Us – a riveting zombie-themed series, based closely on a PlayStation game – will know that gaming as a cultural and narrative form is well and truly on the rise.

Ask a teenager which they prefer to do: watch Netflix or play video games while chatting online with their friends and other fellow gamers – and there is every chance games will get the nod.

Overall, gaming is now estimated to be worth €200bn a year – of which roughly €35bn is made up of content creation.

Results from Dublin-headquartered multinational Keywords Studios, which now has 12,000 staff in studios around the world, including at its Leopardstown HQ, underlined how gaming – and content creation in particular – has stayed immune to the vagaries of the market, while others in the broader tech-related sector are catching colds.

Keywords is a video games technical and creative services provider – so it operates in the €12bn portion of the overall video market that sees content creation outsourced by other studios. Keywords CEO Bertrand Bodson outlined in an earnings call this week how the company now has a 6pc share of this market, making it the market leader.

“That gives you a sense of the opportunity that we are going after,” he told analysts.

Its strong performance saw revenue rise 35pc in 2022 to €691m, with pretax profit increasing 42pc to €68m. The strong performance has been reflected in the firm’s share price in London, where it is listed. By the beginning of this month it was up over 30pc in 12 months. It fell back somewhat over the past few days, as markets in general took fright, but is still up more than 19pc.

"I think it's fair to say that we've delivered an excellent performance for 2022,” said Bodson, in an upbeat briefing that would make some of his tech sector peers misty-eyed for their own good old days.

But on the call it was their CFO, Jon Hauck, who hinted at the possibilities that lie ahead for Keywords, and other strong players in the video games sector.

He see the world of entertainment developing into a hybrid of old fashioned TV and movies, with a dose of live social media and chat – all built on top of platforms that are increasingly influenced by a relatively silent but relentless revolution in gaming.

“We're looking to build out our expertise in other areas – particularly areas like social media and influencer marketing, which are both increasing areas of focus for the industry,” said Hauck.

“There's also an increased convergence between gaming and M&A worlds in marketing as we are seeing more and more crossover between IPs, with The Last of Us and Hogwarts Legacy being two recent examples,” he said.

Keywords is continuing to see “more and more convergence at our customer level” in media and entertainment and is also witnessing “the increasing use of game-engine technologies to deliver film and TV content”.

Keywords is “evaluating opportunities” in this regard, he said.

Like the zombies in The Last Of Us, the gamers are coming – and they will be happy to feast on anybody that shows weakness elsewhere in the sector.

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The Last Of Us proves that gamers are well capable of taking a bite out of other tech

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