Level-Up: Charity Gaming - Paradise Shift

Sep 4, 2026

Uploaded by Rizky

A strategic introduction to how charities can use modern gaming to generate philanthropic and commercial income. The report frames gaming as mainstream culture with major global revenue growth and highlights audience, partnership, platform, goals, and execution pathways. It outlines a who/why/where/what/how strategy, emphasizes building internal expertise, and presents a gaming-verse structure across three chapters with case studies to support innovation and planning.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages87

Reading Time3 h 39 min

AccessFree to download

Foreword

Into the Gaming-verse

Ready, Player One?

Players

Creators

Story Mode

Where We Tell Stories

The Stories We Tell

Income Expansion Pack

Income Through Gaming

Trend Bytes

So What?

| | | | | | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | |

LEVEL
UP | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | C H A R I T Y G A M I N G MENU INCOME 124 EXPANSION PACK Introduction 127 Income Through 128 Gaming So What? 156 INTO THE 6 GAMING-VERSE What is Gaming? 9 Gaming: The Numbers 12 History of Gaming 14 Mythbusting 18 Charities & Gaming 22 TREND BYTES 158 2 READY, PLAYER 26 ONE? Introduction 29 Players 30 Creators 54 So What? 66 TL;DR 10 FOR 10 164 3 STORY MODE 68 Introduction 71 Where We Tell Stories 72 The Stories We Tell 84 So What? 122 FOREWORD INTO THE GAMING-VERSE READY, PLAYER ONE? STORY MODE INCOME EXPANSION PACK TREND BYTES 10 FOR 10 GLOSSARY FOREWORD EAT. SLEEP. GAME . REPEAT. Gaming has come a long way from being a niche hobby, stereotyped by pale teenage boys gaming for hours in their bedrooms, to being an inescapable part of our day-to-day life. From a wildly competitive Monopoly game night which ends with someone flipping the board, doing the Wordle while you eat breakfast, a year-long intensive Dungeons and Dragons campaign, to the gamification of your daily step count. WIth 3.2 billion gamers worldwide and 44 million in the UK, gaming has gone certifiably mainstream. Games are a compelling creative medium that can distract you for weeks in a saga worthy of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, or fill that 5 minute moment of time whilst your lunch heats in the microwave. Add onto that, that gaming isan incredibly lucrative industry, generating a whopping $406b in revenue worldwide, and it’s no wonder that charities want to get in on the act. The obvious first step for many has been dipping a toe into streaming. Partnering with professional and amateur streamers, or running charity-led streams to generate income. And there have been some big successes in this space. But we believe there’s so much more potential as yet untapped by the charity sector to generate philanthropic and commercial income through gaming. But in order to unlock this new universe, you need a strategy. One that unpacks the full potential of gaming and answers the who, why, where, what and how. Who: Gamers are not one audience. They reflect the diversity of society, so work out which communities and which audiences you want to prioritise and engage. Don’t lump 44 million people together into one segmentation bucket. The who is also vital to who you have in your team. Build your internal talent and expertise of people who already understand and inhabit some of these spaces. Don’t rely on one poor soul who has a Twitch account to answer all your gaming questions. Why: Why would gamers, brands, developers and streamers want to partner with and support your work? But equally, why are they the right partners for you? Go multiplayer; find experts to help guide your journey and inform your decision making. Where: As much as gamers are not one audience, gaming is not one medium. From video games, to board games to LARPing. There’s also a myriad of different platforms and channels to choose from. We recommend setting up camp on a platform like Twitch and learning the landscape before you dive in. What: What are your goals? What do you want to achieve through gaming? Is it brand awareness, income generation, data collection, citizen science, safeguarding, lobbying, or a bit of everything? And which element of this is the most important? How: This is where your strategy can get creative. From brand activations in the metaverse, to gaming telethons, charity gaming Cons, owned-game development, content collabs, around-game merchandising, sponsorship, events. The list goes on and on. How do these link together and ladder up to deliver on your goals? Unlike previous Good Futures Paradigm Shifts, this report is less a ‘future of’and more of an ‘intro guide to’ the gaming space. We’ve split it across three chapters: who is playing and

FAQs

What does the report aim to help charities achieve with gaming?

It provides an intro guide to the gaming space and a strategy for unlocking gaming’s potential to deliver philanthropic and commercial income.

How does the report suggest charities define their target audience?

It recommends segmenting by communities and prioritizing which audiences to engage, rather than treating gamers as a single group.

What key planning questions does the strategy address?

The report structures planning around who, why, where, what, and how, linking goals to platforms, partnerships, and creative engagement formats.

Sep 4, 2026

Uploaded by Rizky