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As of 2016, the gaming industry is a $91 billion market that is continuing to boom. Some researchers say it could reach $108.9 billion by the end of this year, meaning the gaming industry will have officially surpassed the US film industry. This growth hasn’t gone unnoticed by retail giants like Amazon, who purchased Twitch.tv, the world’s largest game livestreaming platform, for nearly $1 billion.

While the gaming industry continues to exceed expectations by leaps and bounds, there are huge areas for improvement, specifically in the areas of marketing, advertising, and of creating holistic gaming ecosystems.

The world of blockchain and cryptocurrencies has slowly been creeping into nearly every conceivable industry, and the gaming industry is no exception. Tokens like Digibyte, Refereum, Enjin Coin, and GameCredits, to name just a few, realize that the gaming world is fractured. Currently, gamers are amassing some of the largest followings in the world. They are what drive this astounding market growth, but they are rarely rewarded for their efforts. Instead, centralized platforms like Youtube, Twitch, Google, etc. make millions from ad revenue that rightly belongs to the people who create their traffic through their followings: the gamers.

According to SlashData, 48% of all developers create games, but most game companies can’t afford to continue hiring top notch developers because they spend a disproportionate amount on centralized platform advertising. What if game companies could instead put that money into better developers? They would surely be able to create more and better products. What if some of that money went to rewarding the influencers in the gaming space that continue to bring the company millions of customers annually? By implementing utility tokens into the space, all this and more is possible.

Some utility tokens seek to reward gamers for being influencers — building large followings and bringing more customers to game companies. This can be done through referral link quotas or even bounties — getting paid by gaming companies to complete a certain task on a specific video game. In this way, game companies can invest their marketing and advertising funds into the people that truly do most of the audience growth legwork, instead of in centralized advertising. Other utility tokens, in contrast, are attempting to make gaming ecosystems more holistic.

Most games have purchasable in-game content. For instance, in the mobile game Clash of Clans, you can purchase gems that give you instant access to special perks or upgrades that you may take you several months to achieve otherwise. In other games, you can use fiat currency to purchase in-game armor or weapons that you can’t get in any other way. This is a great way for companies to make money after the release of the game, but the system could evolve further.

Several utility token companies have proposed a new gaming ecosystem that rewards both companies and gamers. What if the piece of armor or the weapon you purchase in-game had a representational value outside of the game? It could then be bought or sold among players inside or outside the game, and could perhaps even be sold for fiat currency on a third party exchange. Progress in-game is thereby monetized. There is incentive to get to the end, or get different achievements, because the gamer could make money selling their items afterwards to new gamers.

By creating such liquid ecosystems, gaming companies would be creating much more than a passing form of entertainment. They would be creating entire economies. The value generated would be staggering. The industry itself would evolve from just being a mindless pastime to instead being viable income creation. No longer would the gaming ecosystem be binary between development companies and centralized advertising conglomerates, but tertiary between the gamer, the influencer, and the development company. Centralized advertisers need not be excluded — influencers could further their reputation and following by purchasing their own ads through the old platforms much like development companies are doing now.

The gaming industry is exploding with growth, but blockchain and utility tokens could disrupt the market in a big way. Early adopters of these new innovations have the opportunity to ride this wave of profitability, but the important thing is to know what tokens to purchase, and when to participate.