What the generational divide means for building fandom

Hello everyone, welcome to Edition 109!

Gabriella here, and today I’m really excited to be diving into IGN Entertainment’s Generations in Play report (and randomly name-dropping my current favourite TV show. It’s relevant, I promise).

The below explores generational discovery and what fan-led businesses need to consider when trying to bridge those divides.

Plus Speed Reads of:

Today, discovery tends to be something between accident and kismet. Something appears in your feed, a friend shares a clip in a group chat, a creator you already follow goes deep on a title you’d dismissed. You’re not looking for it, but it finds you anyway (cue Jaws music).

That's a completely different experience from how we all discovered our favourite passions and fandoms a decade ago. I remember doing deep dives into my favourite actors’ Wikipedia pages to see what else they’d done, or desperately searching for when my favourite band would go on tour again (unfortunately, most of the bands I love are now dead). I looked on purpose before committing time or money to anything.

These two methods of engagement are labelled as different operating systems by IGN Entertainment's Generations in Play report. They’re built in different media environments, running entirely different logic about what earns attention, trust, and commitment.

For you, understanding that nuance means you can build a diverse and loyal audience by knowing how to campaign and live in those separate operating systems.

These new operating systems have caused what the report calls “The Great Discovery Inversion.”

Gen X approaches entertainment with a destination in mind. They search with intent, prioritise name recognition, and are 38% less likely to use AI for discovery. What I found surprising was that this didn’t stem from technophobia, but because they're a generation that demands human accountability behind every recommendation.

Gen Z, by contrast, lets discovery happen to them. Social algorithms are their primary entry point. 85% of Gen Z respondents use social media for news and updates. They're 16% more likely to browse recommended videos on YouTube rather than searching for anything specific. The platform does the curation for them.

Millennials sit in the middle, and are the most interesting cohort as a result (way to go, fellow Gen Y-ers!). We’re the last generation to default to Google, but the first to fully adopt the feed. We basically triangulate, using reviews, creator deep dives, and community recommendations. We treat them as complementary layers of validation rather than competing sources. We’re 43% more likely to prioritise depth and expertise as a trust signal vs other generations.

→ A side note: We’re also the podcast generation. Millennials are 16% more likely to listen than any other cohort, treating audio as an intentional, high-attention slot built into the daily routine rather than passive background noise. If you’re really targeting us, podcasts are an underutilised channel!

As we covered in Edition 106, the same thing is happening on the media buying side: the most efficient brand growth is now happening outside traditional channels, reaching audiences that linear TV never touches. The report I’m talking about now shows why: because it isn’t just the platforms that have changed, but also the discovery mechanisms for younger audiences that have fundamentally shifted.

If your content strategy is built around intent-driven search, you're invisible to the audience running a feed-first operating system. I think the winning approach is designing for both utility content that earns high-intent search and social-native content that earns its way into the algorithm.

There are a few great examples of brands and IP holders that were able to authentically participate in these different operating systems.

1) Spotify Wrapped - it’s the clearest cross-operating-system campaign in mainstream marketing. 

A report into Spotify Wrapped’s 2024 campaign found conversations spanning all five living generations, with each engaging through a completely different lens. The genius is that the same product speaks to all three operating systems and multiple generations without compromising any of them.

2) Fallout (the show). When the Amazon Prime series launched in 2024, IGN's own data showed Gen X flooding game guide and walkthrough pages: intent-driven, utility-first, mastery-seeking. Millennials drove podcast discussion and editorial review traffic. Gen Z's engagement was almost entirely creator-led: behind-the-scenes celebrity content, Walton Goggins memes, reaction videos, etc.

The IP was the same, but the access points were separate. 

What they got right was not trying to funnel everyone into one format. The show was the anchor, but Prime Video helped each generation find it through their own discovery system.

3) The NFL's layered strategy is a great sports-specific example, and something I wrote about just recently. The NFL now runs essentially three parallel tracks: linear broadcast for Gen X (the live-event, the season structure, the statistical narrative); creator and YouTube programming for Millennials (Drive to Survive-style athlete storytelling, the podcast ecosystem around games); and TikTok/social creator partnerships for Gen Z (personality-first, behind-the-scenes, cultural moments that extend well beyond the sport). 

Duh, we hear you say. Different generations do things differently. Fair challenge. What the report specifically says about Gen Z is perhaps the most intriguing.

Gen Z is the generation:

These things look contradictory, but they aren’t. AI integrations into Google and beyond mean everyone can now get an answer to almost any question instantly. That access means information is no longer the premium, and what now becomes scarce, and therefore genuinely valuable, is judgment, community membership, and shared moments.

In short, the person behind the content, behind the answer.

That human touch is key for the things that actually shape identity and belonging, which I covered in depth last week, and will be covered in the Psychology of Fandom keynote at SEG3 London next month.

The implication for brand builders goes beyond making sure you have the human touch in your content pipeline. It means that to reach audiences authentically in their operating systems, you have to show up with more than just access to content. You need to bring a perspective, a reason to gather, and the opportunity to be part of something bigger than yourself.

In a very niche TV show I’ve been watching recently (Tastuki: Too Kind for School on Netflix), a troubled teen has all but vanished from the local ‘community centre’ he used to frequent. The community centre’s manager decides to reach out to the kid, not by going to his house, but by logging into the game he loves to play. It’s in this virtual space that he reaches the teen first, building back the rapport that was shattered.

Okay, Gabriella, why are you bringing this up? 

Basically, the report says something similar about how Gen Z views gaming compared to Gen X. The latter are completionists. They play to finish. Their top reason for returning to a game is "wanting to build on what I've already achieved."

Gen Z inhabit games. Their top driver for returning is new customisation: skins, emotes, identity markers. Their second is community content: mods, custom maps, and user-generated additions that extend the game indefinitely. They're 20% more likely to stay with a game because of UGC. For them, the game is the background for the hangout. The win, or completion, is secondary to social engagement.

Gen A builds them. Sandbox and creative games like Minecraft and Roblox are their dominant genre. According to a different survey, 50% of Gen Alpha parents say their kids play sandbox/creative games. These aren't games with win or completion phases. The drive to return is the act of creation: building the environments for the hangout and connectivity.

All generations have one thing in common: 90% of all players use some form of game help to stay engaged with friends. This shift from “Players to Residents” tells you that utility is the connective tissue underneath all of it. The tools that help people progress and belong are what keep communities alive long after the launch window closes or the game credits roll.

These behaviours extend well beyond gaming. As we explored in Edition 104, Netflix is actively building games into its subscription model to reduce churn, because time spent inside an ecosystem is a fundamentally better retention mechanic than content that gets watched once and forgotten. The same logic (using diverse ecosystems to garner holistic loyalty) applies to sports franchises, entertainment IP, and any brand trying to build long-term community rather than one-off campaigns.

And as we've written in Edition 103, the IP that survives this era is IP that is played, watched, and lived in. 

The question for IP holders: Are you creating the conditions for longer-term residency within your IP?

The question for marketers: Are you leveraging the way Gen Z inhabits gaming spaces to create lasting brand loyalty?

I keep coming back to Fallout and the NFL, and how each generation and each operating system contributed to the success and longevity of the expansion of those IPs. I think about Tatsuki going into the video game to connect with a struggling teen. I think about the ways I found the things I love, and who introduced me to them and how.

The connecting thread of all of this is understanding that ‘audience’ isn’t just a single-use term. It encompasses all of these generations and operating systems. I think understanding them, where they intersect and where they diverge, is the most important thing any brand trying to build a dedicated and intergenerational fanbase can do. 

The fund offers “a better way of getting capital into the hands of indie studios, many of which are not equipped for or interested in traditional equity-based investment.”

TL;DR -

Why you should care

Historically, a game had to be a breakout hit before Hollywood came calling; Griffin is now treating the indie game development phase as an R&D lab for cinematic and transmedia IP.

By involving brand stewards like Dylan Clark (The Batman, The Penguin, Miami Vice) and Russell Binder (Five Nights at Freddy’s, Angry Birds, The Walking Dead) at the funding stage, they are effectively solving the scouting problem by finding and pre-validating games that have transmedia potential before they even launch.

Griffin’s Peter Levin talked about this at SEG3 LA. He described it as a ‘hub-spoke’ model. Historically, gaming was the spoke, but looking forward, “it may end up inverted where gaming ends up being the hub and the other extensions the spoke.” Griffin is now putting money on this inversion.

A game’s potential is being measured by its lore-to-revenue ratio. Specifically, how well a game’s world-building can sustain sticky communities that translate across media silos. Griffin-backed lore-driven games include Menace and Gilded Destiny. High-fidelity, physics-based games like Kinstrife and Highland Keep show they’re already thinking about minimising the visual gap between gameplay and cinematic production, ensuring these indie IPs are structurally Hollywood-ready from launch.

Electronic Arts signed a multiyear deal with Visa across EA Sports FC and College Football, building branded challenges, rewards, and real-world activations directly into gameplay.

TL:DR -

Why you should care

Integrations have become the go-to for many brands - and that’s continued with Visa & EA. Branded objectives, squad-building challenges, and stat boosts tied to sponsor partnerships become integral to the game, which is, of course, a fundamentally different relationship between brand and audience than a pitchside billboard or video ad.

The College Football mechanic is the one worth stealing. Letting players simulate accepting NIL deals that actually affect their in-game career mirrors how sport works in real life and makes the brand feel like part of the world rather than bolted onto it. This integration was launched in the 2024 version of the game, but this is the first time a brand has been hard-coded into the career logic of the game.

This deal shows that there is value beyond just showing up in the game. Becoming part of the game’s economic and social systems creates a layer of natural participation that brings the brand (in this case, Visa) into the players’ lives holistically and authentically.

Working on anything cool, or have a press release you would like us to cover? Send it in for the chance for it to be covered in next week’s edition!

That’s all for now, everyone - thanks again for reading the latest edition of The SEG3 Report. If you found it of interest, please do consider sharing with a colleague or friend who’d enjoy it too!