This article is part of Bain's 2025 Gaming Report
Success in video games will always begin and end with having a great game that players love. But as the industry grows more competitive, media formats blur, and gaming’s cultural reach expands, some of the biggest opportunities for growth can be found outside the game. Film and TV adaptations, thriving online communities, live experiences—these aren’t just marketing vehicles for a game anymore; they’re integral to players’ experiences of their favorite games.
For companies that already have a hit game, the question isn’t whether to expand beyond it. It’s how to craft a long-term strategy that unlocks the full value of their successful intellectual property (IP).
The new battleground: attention
The fight for consumer time and dollars across experiences continues to intensify. The number of new PC games released annually has more than doubled over the past five years to almost 19,000 in 2024, while the number of YouTube videos has almost quadrupled during that period to about 15 billion last year. With an overwhelming volume of new content—across games, streaming, user-generated content, and more—cutting through the noise is harder than ever.
Developing a hit game is already a steep climb. That’s why publishers increasingly look to extend and evolve their flagship franchises, not just through sequels but across platforms simultaneously.
The old model—launch a game, then maybe a spin-off or a show—is no longer enough to achieve the IP’s full potential. Today’s breakout franchises launch stories across multiple media at once. Companies like Riot Games, with the latest Arcane series, are showing what’s possible: TV shows, refreshed in-game content, music videos, merch drops, and updates in partner games, all orchestrated to deepen fan engagement and drive growth.
It’s working. On average, around a quarter of gamers’ time spent consuming other media is focused on engaging with game-related IP, according to a Bain & Company survey conducted this year (see Figure 1). Furthermore, they spend a meaningful part of their time in the gaming environment on activities other than gameplay, such as socializing and developing their own content or character modifications.
Notes: Respondents were asked what percentage of their time spent on an entertainment activity was related to gaming; includes only gamers within a representative sample that was calculated by weighting the number of respondents per age group to balance proportions for each surveyed country (the US, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, the UK, and the UAE)
Source: Bain Video Game Consumption Survey, May 2025 (representative sample n=1,278; total N=5,243)Increasingly, gamers and fans are falling in love with universes, stories, and characters rather than the entertainment format itself. In our survey, enjoying the gameplay is, of course, gamers’ top reason for choosing to play a particular game. But more than 30% of respondents said that having characters they like, an immersive world or universe, and a compelling storyline were among the top five reasons why they selected a particular game (see Figure 2).
Notes: Respondents were asked to rank options in order from one to five, with one being the most important; includes only gamers within a representative sample that was calculated by weighting the number of respondents per age group to balance proportions for each surveyed country (the US, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, the UK, and the UAE)
Source: Bain Video Game Consumption Survey, May 2025 (representative sample n=1,278; total N=5,243)This shift is also reshaping media more broadly. Game mechanics are bleeding into other storytelling genres, and the language of other media has been “gamified,” which is resonating heavily with younger generations. Think literary role-playing games (LitRPGs), isekai manga, or anime such as Solo Leveling.
The result is cross-format success that fuels the game and vice versa. Over the six months following the release of an adapted movie or TV series, the number of average concurrent users (ACU) of the original game increases by 45% on average. But quality matters: TV and film adaptations with more critical acclaim saw significantly larger increases in ACU. Adaptations with Rotten Tomatoes critic scores of 91% or higher saw a 69% increase in ACU on average over the six months following the adaptation’s release. Meanwhile, those with a score between 61% and 90% saw ACU increase by 34% on average, and those with a score below 61% only increased ACU by 7% on average (see Figure 3).
Note: Average increase in ACU calculated as the difference between ACU in the three months before release and ACU in the six months after
Sources: Rotten Tomatoes; Steam Charts; Bain analysis (n=13 games)This can be particularly powerful for franchises with a long run of games. Fallout’s successful 2024 TV series reignited interest across all 10-plus games in the franchise, some of which received timely updates to capitalize on the buzz. That kind of flywheel—IP sparking engagement, which in turn catalyzes game interest—helps franchises endure.
Beyond extensions: building ecosystems
The best companies aren’t just expanding IP and creating cross-media adaptations. They’re orchestrating entire ecosystems. Platforms like Discord, YouTube, and Twitch have become core to consumer engagement with companies’ owned, curated content. Some are going even further. Nintendo, for example, launched Nintendo Music (free for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers), with a wide selection of music from the company’s games. It essentially created a new data-driven touchpoint, at limited extra cost, to help the company better understand consumers.
Gaming companies are also taking cues from the traditional media and entertainment playbook. Merchandising, licensing, and real-world experiences—like Minecraft’s London pop-up event—are becoming powerful levers for monetization and deepening fan engagement.
There’s no shortcut
None of this works without a great game, one with an ardent fan community, at the center. But even with a hit, scaling beyond the game requires more than sporadic experiments. It demands a focused, player-first strategy designed for the long haul, with an operating model and capabilities built to support it.
Getting the approach right involves navigating increasingly difficult terrain. The rise of user-generated content is forcing companies to decide how much to empower and partner with creators. Mods, fan art, and game streams can extend a game’s lifespan by providing fresh experiences and keeping the community invested, through essentially free innovation. Some publishers protect their IP tightly; others give external creators more freedom and foster open collaboration. The right answer depends on the brand, but every company needs a policy that’s intentional and future-ready.
Generative AI similarly adds both complexity and opportunity. It can enable tools for fans to generate content more easily, but if left unchecked, it could accelerate the proliferation of brand-diluting content. Companies will need to make hard decisions with major implications for their IP: How much control to retain? How much to open up? And how to protect what makes their IP special?
Regardless of approach, there are several common principles that set winning IP owners apart.
Respect and embrace the fans. Leading companies maintain quality and authenticity to the game’s lore across all media. Loyal fans will reward faithfulness and punish betrayal. One of the clearest examples is this year’s A Minecraft Movie, which made creativity a central theme of the plot (an ode to the game’s creative spirit) and geared the film toward its young core audience, with game references and jokes throughout. A Minecraft Movie scored almost $1 billion at the global box office, becoming one of the highest-grossing film adaptations of a video game ever.
The most successful gaming companies also encourage fan contributions (mods and art) through official support. Fostering player creativity boosts engagement and loyalty.
The Minecraft Marketplace, which allows players to create and sell custom game maps, character skins, and more, had paid out more than $350 million to players by 2021. Minecraft players can also vote on new features directly on the official platform. These connections have nurtured significant engagement: Minecraft Live, the biannual interactive livestream hosted by the game’s developer, Mojang Studios, attracted more than 750,000 viewers in March.
Expand across media selectively. Not every story belongs on every screen. Leading companies only pursue new formats that fit the brand and avoid overextending, which dilutes the IP and harms quality.
It’s important to understand the new format. For example, video game IP is more likely to succeed in film or TV when it’s grounded in a compelling story. The Witcher franchise, which many consider a successful crossover from gaming to TV and animated movies, was originally based on a book that had strong characters and plot arcs.
That’s not to say that only story-based games can succeed. A Minecraft Movie’s box-office success proved others can. However, it’s important to consider which elements of the game resonate with players—the characters, world, story, or opportunities for self-expression—and play to those strengths.
Build an intentional, comprehensive roadmap. This needs to be more than just marketing. How do you take a player or fan on a journey that immerses them deeply in the IP? Leading companies prioritize long-term engagement over short-term monetization. They plan content roadmaps over years, not just one launch, to keep the franchise and IP both fresh and relevant.
Invest in the operating model and key capabilities. Organizational structure plays a role, but ensuring players and fans engage with IP requires investing in business processes, governance forums, and new capabilities around elements such as interactive storytelling and IP management.
Winning beyond the game also depends on having sufficiently robust data and analytics capabilities to make sound strategic decisions. Leading companies will consider partnerships to close gaps in some internal capabilities, particularly areas where it’s more challenging for the company to add value or differentiate itself.
The opportunity is bigger than the game
Gaming executives recognize that winning beyond the game is becoming more critical as the convergence of media formats blurs the lines between playing, socializing, creating, and watching. Although the gaming industry’s pandemic-era boom has slowed somewhat, demand for compelling, connected entertainment remains strong. For companies that get it right, “beyond the game” isn’t just a side hustle—it’s a key growth engine. Those that master it will deepen players’ love of the franchise, unlock new revenue that can be reinvested in developing the next winning game, and build the kind of iconic franchises that endure for decades.