Who Wins When You Watch? Understanding the Attention Economy in Gaming, Social Media, and Esports
This opinion piece is a joint effort written by Jordan Whitaker and Bubba Gaeddert, combining their experience across education, coaching, research, esports, and event management.
Introduction - By: Bubba Gaeddert
The attention economy isn’t new, but it’s never been more powerful than it is right now. Attention is what drives platforms, influences design, and fuels monetization. In gaming, social media, and esports, your time isn’t just valuable. It’s the product.
Every app you use, video you watch, and match you stream is built to keep you watching longer. The more time you spend, the more money someone makes. That’s the economy of attention. And as we continue to build digital communities, platforms, and careers in this space, we need to stop and ask: at what cost?
There was a time when we went online with a purpose. You typed in a website, did what you came to do, and logged off. Now, everything we use is designed to keep us there longer than we planned. From “just one more scroll” to “one more round,” the shift has been slow but intentional.
Are we designing experiences to entertain, connect, and challenge people? Or are we creating systems that trap people in a loop just long enough to click one more time?
This piece looks at how gaming and esports use attention to shape behavior, grow profits, and define what success looks like for players, for companies, and for the future of digital culture.
The Attention Economy in Video Games - By: Bubba Gaeddert
Video games have always been about holding attention. But the methods have changed as the business models and technology have evolved.
In the early days, arcade games were designed around time limits and coin drops. They were short, intense, and hard. These weren’t just design decisions, they were business decisions. The faster you failed, the more coins you inserted. Games like Pac-Man and Space Invaders were addictive because they hit you with fast feedback and high stakes.
As consoles entered the home, developers had to design games that could justify a one-time purchase. That led to longer campaigns, character development, and save systems. Attention was still the goal, but now the metric is playtime across days and weeks. RPGs and platformers became the new normal, immersive, long-form, and deeply engaging.
After the turn of the century, attention loops became part of the genre. Games like World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, and League of Legends built daily missions, XP systems, and timed unlocks that rewarded consistent log-ins. It wasn’t always just about fun. It was about forming habits.
There are many stories of gamers getting up early to play World of Warcraft, right after they stayed up late doing the same to grind for levels. It wasn’t just a game anymore. It was a lifestyle. A commitment. And that’s what attention-driven design aims for: daily returns that feel like personal investments, built around the benefits of social interaction that games provide.
Today, live-service games like Fortnite, Valorant, and Genshin Impact dominate. Players log in to claim daily rewards, finish event passes, or catch the latest crossover. These games constantly update, and that constant flow of new content keeps attention high. Not because of gameplay alone, but because of fear of missing out (FOMO).
Are many games now designed with obligation instilled? Are we teaching players to enjoy the game or to chase the next dopamine hit?
These same principles didn’t just shape how games were played, they began to shape how games were watched. As competitive gaming evolved, attention strategies followed closely behind.
Attention Economy in Esports - By: Jordan Whitaker
Society is constantly inundated with information. While the original use of cellphones centred on making and receiving calls, smartphones are now typically used for everything but phone calls. YouTube, live sports, sharing memes with friends across the world, and playing mobile games with daily rewards can keep you coming back. Given the overload of information, flashy, eye-catching, distinct content, and alluring functionality tend to drive consumer interest. This means products need to make a strong first impression to earn attention. id Software’s FPS game Quake offers an early example of attention-driven design in competitive play. The 1997 Red Annihilation tournament featured Dennis Fong “Thresh”, who became widely known as the first professional gamer and innovator of the “WASD” keybindings for optimal FPS play. His popularity in the gaming community fueled interest in the event, and John Carmack set that fuel on fire by adding his custom Ferrari 328 GTS to the $5,000 grand prize. Seasoned esports enthusiasts still talk about this spectacle and what it did to add momentum to the growing competitive gaming scene. When it comes to esports, consumers are no strangers to attention economy strategies influencing their habits, though many may not be consciously aware of it.
Developers and organizers began to recognize that gamers are real people shaped by culture, identity, and emotion. The Overwatch League (OWL) and Blizzard Entertainment keenly understood the importance of these factors, drawing upon long-held in-game and real-life rivalries in 2022 for the pro scene debut of Overwatch 2 – The Battle for Texas. Fans loved it, and why wouldn’t they? The rivalry to be the best in Texas is deeply rooted in Texas sports and cultural identity, and the feud between the Dallas Fuel and Houston Outlaws across years of OWL is an extension of this tradition. The Dallas Fuel and Houston Outlaws rivalry wasn’t just built in-game. It tapped into a long-standing Texas sports rivalry that fans already knew and cared about. Understanding how to capture the market via attention tactics powers fanbases, drives merchandise, and defines sponsorship strategy. Esports organizations can craft identities around existing attention, interest, and vacuums, and use this to drive partnerships with local, regional, and national sponsors that align with that identity and strategy. “Dallas Fuel” was owned by Team Envy and was deliberately branded as the Fuel as a strategic nod to the oil industry, which defines the area as well as their key investor, Kenneth Hersh, a leader in the energy sector. As esports continues to contend with issues of profitability and sustainability, keeping the attention of consumers and compelling product engagement will remain a critical priority for stakeholders.
Esports World Cup 2024 - By: Jordan Whitaker
The 2024 Esports World Cup (EWC) was designed to impress. Hosted in Riyadh with over $60 million in prize money, it brought together thirty partner teams and twenty-two game titles for a global spectacle. According to the Esports World Cup Foundation, the event drew more than 2 million in-person visitors and 500 million online views across 250 million hours of content. At its peak, League of Legends alone hit 3.5 million concurrent viewers.
Every detail was engineered for impact. From the airport to downtown, the city was covered with digital billboards and EWC banners. Inside Boulevard City, fans were immersed in a gamer’s theme park. Drone shows lit the sky. Giant props of PUBG helmets and Rocket League cars lined the streets. Anime halls, manga cafés, cosplay staff, and VR combat arenas filled the space. Neymar Jr. high-fived fans before jumping onstage for a celebrity showmatch, handing off the controller to his son mid-round. Giveaways of full consoles and top-tier peripherals kept the energy high between matches.
It wasn’t just an esports tournament. It was a controlled environment built to capture and hold your attention. It made staying all day easy — and spending money even easier.
But this level of spectacle raises deeper questions. Who benefits most when the experience is built this way? Was this about serving the global esports community, or about using esports to project influence and generate economic return? The EWC provided financial relief for some orgs and titles in decline, but it also marked a shift in power and ownership. When attention is the goal, events stop being just about play. They become tools for control, branding, and monetization.
The 2024 Esports World Cup wasn’t just made to entertain you. It was made to keep you watching, keep you spending, and keep you coming back. That’s the attention economy at scale.
The Attention Economy on Social Media - By: Bubba Gaeddert
Social media is the most visible engine of the attention economy. Platforms are designed to feed you an infinite stream of content, with algorithms constantly adjusting to whatever holds your attention the longest. They aren’t neutral tools. They are machines designed to predict and manipulate behavior.
Gaming lives in this space. Whether it’s Twitch streams, YouTube reaction videos, or short-form TikToks, gaming content thrives where attention is measured in seconds. Players are expected to build personal brands, share daily updates, and constantly promote their value.
Open TikTok and you’ll see it right away: bold text, shocking expressions, and hooks like ‘wait for it.' The content isn’t random. It’s manufactured to capture attention in the first second. A content creator doesn’t just play games anymore, they’re their own editor, brand manager, and producer. They’re trying to survive in a system that rewards reaction over reflection.
Movies like The Social Dilemma and Childhood 2.0 break this down well. They show how these platforms affect mental health, especially in young people. Parents feel stuck. Schools feel behind. And kids grow up in a world where “logging off” doesn’t feel like an option.
Books like Parental Control by Titania Jordan and Parenting in a Tech World by Jordan and Matt McKee provide tools, but they also confirm the problem: kids are growing up inside a digital business model that sees them as users, not humans.
Are we being honest about the pressure kids face to always be online?
What should responsibility look like for families, educators, and tech companies?
Using Gaming to Cope - By: Bubba Gaeddert
Excessive gaming is real for some and often misunderstood by many. It’s not about disliking games. It’s about why someone keeps playing, even when it's interfering with health, school, relationships, or emotional well-being.
The DSM-5 lists Internet Gaming Disorder as a condition for further study, and the World Health Organization recognized Gaming Disorder in 2019. Both describe patterns of behavior that involve impaired control, prioritizing gaming over daily life, and continuing to game despite negative consequences. But not all experts agree that this constitutes an addiction.
Dr. Rachel Kowert, a clinical psychologist and expert in gaming psychology, encourages us to think differently: excessive gaming is often a maladaptive coping strategy, not an addiction in itself. That means it’s used to manage deeper challenges like anxiety, depression, trauma, or a lack of emotional safety, rather than the game being the root problem.
Organizations like Game Quitters, while referring to it as addiction, still provide useful resources for players struggling with these patterns. Their data shows:
About 3–4 percent of gamers may meet criteria for clinical impairment.
Over 10 percent may be at risk for unhealthy gaming patterns.
Teens, especially boys, are more vulnerable due to their developing brains and social dynamics.
But the signs go beyond screen time. Missed meals, declining grades, lack of sleep, and withdrawal from offline relationships are not the disease, they’re symptoms of something deeper. The solution isn’t just “unplugging.” It’s about replacing gaming as a coping strategy with healthier tools and support.
I’ve spoken with students who’ve told me they lost entire weekends to ranked matches or raids, not because they were chasing fun, but because they felt anxious, guilty, or pressured to stay online. For them, gaming didn’t feel like a choice anymore, especially in communities where logging out is seen as a weakness.
So we must ask: Is gaming the problem? Or is it the escape?
Families can set tech boundaries with empathy. Schools can create safe spaces for conversations and mental health support. If we treat the behavior as a signal rather than a diagnosis, we create space for understanding, not shame. And that’s when real support becomes possible.
Who Profits From Your Attention?
So, where does your attention go? Advertisers, sponsors, platform owners, and publishers all profit from your time. Ad revenue, microtransactions, merchandise, and engagement stats all convert attention into income. Whether you’re watching a stream, grinding an event pass, or just scrolling TikTok, someone is collecting data, selling placement, or tracking your behavior to increase retention.
In most cases, the profits don’t go back to the player or fan — they go to the stakeholders who built the system. That doesn’t mean it’s all bad, but it does mean we need to look more closely at who benefits from keeping us online. In this system, attention is currency. But the exchange is uneven. Most players give far more than they get in return. And many don’t realize they’re even spending it.
Wrap-Up and Final Thoughts - By: Bubba Gaeddert
So we return to the question: Who wins when you watch? And who decides what you see next?
Every part of this article points back to one idea: your attention has value.
Whether it’s one more round, one more drop, or one more scroll, attention isn’t something we give, it’s something being taken.
In gaming, esports, and social media, attention isn’t just something creators hope for. It’s something companies plan for, invest in, and build entire strategies around. Your time is what powers the system. The more you give, the more they gain.
This is the attention economy.
It rewards whatever holds your focus the longest. It favors designs that keep you checking in. It celebrates creators who can stop your scroll for five more seconds. And it often doesn’t care whether you leave feeling better or worse.
That’s why we have to ask real questions.
Who decides what gets your attention?
What are you giving up to stay online just a little longer?
And who benefits most from keeping you there?
We aren’t against games, events, or platforms. Many of them are built with creativity, joy, and community in mind. But when the goal shifts from meaningful interaction to endless engagement, something changes. The experience becomes less about the player and more about the profit.
This is why attention matters. And why we need to understand how it's used.
If you're a player, what makes you keep coming back?
If you're a parent or teacher, how do you help kids navigate this space?
If you're a developer, what kind of systems are you building?
The point isn’t to reject technology or fear games. The point is to build better systems. Ones that respect attention. Ones that give something back. Ones that value people, not just time.
So we end where we started:
Who wins when you watch?
That starts with asking harder questions, building better systems, and refusing to measure success by engagement alone.
About the Authors:
Jordan Whitaker is an Adjunct Professor and Esports Course Developer, currently serving as a part-time instructor at Syracuse University, Head Coach & Co-Coordinator at Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA), and adjunct faculty at George Mason University, where he established a Minor in Esports Management. Under his leadership, NOVA’s program has earned 8 NJCAA National Championships and a letter of recognition from the Governor of Virginia.
Jordan brings over six years of top-tier collegiate League of Legends coaching experience, having most recently finished Top 24 in North America. Jordan also recently completed his NASEF Fellowship and is a NASEF Mentor candidate. He holds a Master of Public Policy from William & Mary and a Bachelor’s in Political Science from Syracuse University, with a professional background in national security, OSINT research, and supply chain risk analysis.
Bubba Gaeddert is a Senior Lecturer and Head of Events at the College of Esports in London. With over 25 years in traditional sports and non-profits, and more than a decade in gaming and esports, he specializes in event management, media, and esports education. Bubba is also the President and Co-Founder of the Videogames and Esports Foundation (VEF), a leading #STEM-accredited nonprofit that has distributed over $500,000 in grants and scholarships.
A former sports director and marathon race director, Bubba now consults across tech, esports, and education while producing shows like Invite Sent and The rAVe Esports Show through rAVe [PUBS]. His focus is helping students and professionals build meaningful careers through strategic skill development, innovation, and industry collaboration.
