Half a million people.
Not half a million likes. Not half a million views on a 15-second reel. Half a million human beings sitting down, playing the same game, on the same weekend. Slay the Spire 2, the sequel to a roguelike card game that most financial market "analysts" don't even know exists, pulled that crowd during an early access event.
So let me ask you: are you still ignoring the gaming industry as "kid stuff"?
The pixelated elephant in the room
Let's stick to the cold, hard facts. No fluff.
The global video game industry brings in more revenue than Hollywood and the music industry combined. We're talking about a market that surpassed $180 billion in 2024. And this isn't new. This train left the station a long time ago — if you didn't hop on, you got left behind eating dust.
The original Slay the Spire, for those who don't know, was developed by a tiny studio called Mega Crit Games. Two guys. Two. Not some mega corporation with 5,000 employees and an entire floor dedicated to compliance. Two guys with skin in the game up to their necks, who bet everything on an idea the "experts" would've called way too niche.
The first game sold over 7 million copies. Do the math at an average price of $20. That's the kind of money a lot of venture capital funds dream of returning to their investors.
Now the sequel drops and half a million players jump in on the first weekend. That's market validation at the most brutal level possible. No PowerPoint. No fancy pitch deck. No funding round with a fantasyland valuation. Product on the street, people paying, end of story.
What the Joker teaches you about asymmetry
Remember that scene where Heath Ledger's Joker burns the mountain of cash? "It's not about the money. It's about sending a message."
Exactly. And the message here is this: the biggest asymmetric returns are where the consensus isn't looking.
While the Brazilian financial market obsesses over the Selic rate, inflation indexes, and whatever the central bank chairman says next, there's an entire universe of value creation happening in sectors the average Brazilian investor considers "nonsense." Gaming is one of them. And the numbers don't lie — they're stubborn like that.
Nassim Taleb would love this story. A small studio with limited risk (two guys and their computers), virtually unlimited upside, and a product that scales with no meaningful marginal cost. It's the convex payoff in its purest form. The kind of bet Taleb describes as antifragile: the more chaos in the entertainment market, the more these indie games stand out.
Where your wallet comes in
"Okay, but I invest in index funds and fixed income, what does this change for me?"
Here's what it changes: open your eyes to the gaming thesis.
In the U.S. market, companies like Take-Two, Electronic Arts, and even the Embracer Group (which got beaten up badly, I'll admit) are part of a multibillion-dollar ecosystem. There are thematic ETFs for gaming and esports. Tencent, which owns a chunk of half the gaming industry, trades in Hong Kong and via ADRs.
And in Brazil? Well, we're still crawling. But Wildlife Studios, founded by Brazilians, was already valued at over $3 billion. Brazil's gaming consumer market is one of the largest in the world.
The point isn't to go out and buy any random gaming company stock tomorrow. The point is to stop being biased against sectors you don't understand and start studying where real growth is actually happening.
The blind spot of the suit-wearing investor
Benjamin Graham, the father of value investing, used to say that the market in the short run is a voting machine, but in the long run it's a weighing machine. Half a million players voted with their wallets in one weekend. The scale will eventually tip in favor of whoever built the product.
Meanwhile, you've got analysts at big banks recommending the same reheated blue-chip portfolio that hasn't beaten the risk-free rate in three years.
For crying out loud, wake up.
The question is simple: are you investing in the world as it actually is, or in the world as your financial advisor thinks it is?
Because half a million people already gave their answer.
