Key Takeaways:
Gaming is one of the most potent cultural platforms currently shaping how younger consumers express identity, build community, and spend time. Revenue in the global video game market reached approximately $219 billion in 2024, and is expected to grow at around 4% annually through 2028—a signal that gaming is entering a more stable, structurally significant phase rather than riding a temporary surge.
That scale is increasingly visible in real time. 2025 became a breakout year for mass participation on Roblox, as native games repeatedly shattered concurrent-user records. In July, Grow a Garden set a Guinness World Record with 21.6 million players, only to be surpassed months later when Steal a Brainrot reached more than 25 million concurrent users. The movement solidifies gaming's evolution into a form of live, shared culture, one that now rivals social and streaming platforms for attention.
Bain & Company’s 2025 Gaming Report: Breaking Boundaries to Win affirms that the most critical insight for brands is not market size, but what players actually value. Gameplay alone is no longer enough. As gaming matures, players are increasingly prioritizing customization, social connection, and creative agency over visual sophistication, fundamentally reshaping how brands should think about engagement in virtual worlds.
Platform-Style Gaming Redefines Value
Data shows a clear distinction between players who favor platform-style games such as Fortnite, Roblox, and Minecraft and those who prefer more traditional titles. For these platform-first gamers, graphics are secondary to participation.
When platform-first gamers were asked why they play their top game:
This shows a critical shift: social participation and customization outweigh production polish for the players spending the most time in open, evolving game worlds. These are the same environments where beauty brands are increasingly experimenting and where traditional marketing logic often breaks down.
For beauty brands, the implications are significant. The same values that drive engagement in platform-style games—self-expression, personalization, and community validation—mirror the emotional drivers behind beauty consumption itself.
Patrick O’Keefe, Chief Integrated Marketing Officer at e.l.f Beauty, explained that the brand views its community as co-creators of its experiences. “Gaming allows us to build environments where creativity and empowerment aren’t just messages, they’re mechanics,” he told BeautyMatter.
Rather than leading with aesthetics of spectacle, e.l.f’s gaming strategy has focused on enabling players to shape outcomes, experiment freely, and return over time. That approach aligns closely with Bain’s findings that the ability to modify gameplay and play alongside friends is a stronger motivator for platform-first gamers than visual quality.
Impressions to Retention
The gaming industry is shifting from acquisition-led growth to retention-driven ecosystems. As gaming audiences mature, players are consolidating time around a smaller number of games that offer ongoing evolution, social relevance, and progression opportunities.
This dynamic challenges how brands traditionally measure success. In gaming, a single visit has limited value compared to repeat engagement and long session times. What matters instead is how long players stay, how often they return, and whether the experience evolves alongside them.
As O’Keefe frames it: “We’re focused on building spaces people return to because they feel seen, heard, and inspired. When players choose to come back, that's when brand equity compounds.”
Numbers show that regular content updates rank among the top decision factors for players (cited by 31% of correspondents), reinforcing the importance of iteration and ongoing engagement over one-off activations.
For essence, a brand that regularly activates on Roblox, rewards are a “core strategy" used to entice ongoing gameplay. The brand's Fun Pass lets users unlock items as they progress through levels. “Simple unlockables turn to long-term goals. Our essence Fun Pass encourages players to return daily, rewarding consistency and participation,” Sara Apaza, Digital Brand Experience Manager for essence at Cosnova, told BeautyMatter.
Gaming Beyond Gameplay
Another critical insight from Bain’s research is the extent to which gaming permeates other forms of media consumption. On average, 22% of gamers’ weekly time spent on other media is devoted to gaming-related content rather than non-gaming entertainment.
The share is even higher across specific channels:
This data reinforces that gaming is no longer a siloed activity. It functions as a cultural ecosystem, influencing how players consume content, engage with creators, and build identity across platforms.
For beauty brands, this means gaming strategies cannot exist in isolation; successful engagement extends into social streaming and community spaces where players already carry their gaming identities. That dynamic has increasingly opened the door to native commerce and ecosystem-based brand rebuilding.
Some brands are leaning into gaming not just as a commercial channel, but as a space for emotional connection and well-being. e.l.f. Beauty has set a high bar with experiences like Fortune Island: Earn. Learn. Flex., a financial literacy game designed to help young users navigate money responsibly. The brand also partnered with the Ad Council and Walmart to launch Love, Your Mind World, offering mental health education and coping tools for teens.
The impact has been measurable. Allison McDuffee, Roblox’s Global Head of Brand Insights and Management, told BeautyMatter that one in three Roblox users say e.l.f. Beauty is admired on the platform—a result she attributes to the brand’s long-term mindset of treating gaming as an evolving ecosystem and building relevance through multiple experiences over time.
The ecosystem mindset is also extending beyond the screen. Apaza explained that essence has approached gaming as a long-term cultural commitment, bringing together in-game experiences, cosplay competitions, and real-world activations under a single vision for how the brand shows up in gaming.
In 2025, the brand made its first appearance at Gamescom, signaling a focus on building real community connections over short-term visibility. Rather than prioritizing competition, essence’s gaming worlds are designed as safe spaces that encourage creativity, collaboration, and social exchange—reflecting how players actually use gaming platforms today.
Rather than treating gaming as a purely virtual channel, the brand approached Gamescom as a community moment focused on connection and creativity. “It’s not just about visibility, it’s about showing up, being of service, creating emotional experiences, and building real connections,” said Apaza.
That philosophy has also shaped the brand’s partnerships. essence recently collaborated with a fan and makeup artist to integrate products into Selfie Stars, a native Roblox experience created by Henry Sturm. The organic, fan-driven collaboration reflects a broader shift toward co-creation as a source of long-term community equity.
Gaming outside of gameplay thinking has also opened the door to native commerce. In 2025, Fenty Beauty became one of the first beauty brands to launch native commerce on Roblox through the platform’s partnership with Shopify, turning Roblox into a closed-loop environment where discovery, interaction, and purchase seamlessly coexist.
The move reflected a growing understanding that gaming platforms can serve not just as awareness channels but also as fully integrated digital retail spaces.
Co-Creation as Expectation, Not Bonus
Personalization and social play help explain why co-creation has become table stakes in gaming. When 32% of players cite personalized gameplay as a deciding factor it signals an expectation that experiences will adapt to the player, not the other way around.
That expectation shapes how essence approaches gaming. “Our community is deeply invested and eager to participate,” said Apaza. “We actively listen to player feedback and integrate it into how our experiences evolve.”
Rather than treating gaming as a fixed build, essence tracks player suggestions across forums, social platforms, and direct messages, feeding those insights into development and live experiences. This mirrors the report's conclusion: successful gaming platforms are iterative by design and continuously shared by their communities.
The Advertising Paradox
A crucial tension brands must navigate to win is advertising. While 59% of gamers in 2024 and 64% in 2025 agree that ads interrupt their gaming experience, advertising effectiveness is not disappearing.
The takeaway isn't that advertising fails, it’s that intrusive advertising fails. Players respond when commerce is embedded naturally into gameplay and perceived as additive rather than disruptive.
“Our community doesn’t want to be marketed to,” O’Keefe said. “They want to be invited in, to play, create, and express themselves.”
Apaza echoes this philosophy. “If it’s not fun, it doesn’t go live. Players notice immediately when something feels inauthentic.”
Gaming as a Long-Term Strategy
The data paints a clear picture of where gaming and beauty’s opportunities within it are headed. Players are choosing games based on gameplay (49%), social connection (31%), and personalization (32%) while de-emphasizing graphics in favor of participation.
For beauty brands, gaming is no longer an experimental channel or a novelty action. It has become a core cultural platform, one where long-term success depends on listening, evolving, and empowering communities rather than broadcasting at them.
That long-term mindset is also shaping how brands think about what comes next. At essence, experimentation with emerging technologies is rooted in the same community-first philosophy. “Looking ahead, we want to enable players to create directly while they play,” said Apaza, pointing to the brand’s interest in testing real-time, AI-powered item generation within gaming environments. “For us, innovation only matters if it deepens self-expression and gives the community more agency.”
In a market where nearly half of the platform-style gamers prioritize personalization and playing with friends, the brands that win will be those that design for community first and marketing second.
