2020 has been a year of tragedies, with the coronavirus pandemic badly shaking the world economy and many losing their jobs. People are bound to stay at home to lessen the risk of spreading the virus; Because of this a lot of customer-center companies suffered the loss. Many companies were shut down because they were not being able to provide their employees with the minimum wages they deserve. On the contrary to these companies, the gaming Industry flourished with extraordinary numbers.
The gaming industry reported a record sale of 10 and a half Billion Dollars only in April. As more and more people are encouraged to stay inside their homes, video games became a great companion for killing time. The gaming industry reported a 10 per cent to 40 per cent increment in daily traffic on their website and YouTube channel. Let us see, what the factors are leading to this sudden increment.
- #PlayApartTogether
When the pandemic hit the world unexpectedly, the World Health Organisation got a lot of things on its plate. From searching for the cause, to find the remedy, they also had to find a way to encourage people around the world to stay at home. The gaming industry took an initiation by launching a campaign #PlayApartTogether. This campaign includes big gaming companies like Activision Blizzard, Amazon Appstore, Big Fish Games, Game House, Google Play, G5 Entertainment, PUBG Mobiles, Wildlife studios, Twitch Prime, and many more. The gaming industry brought up special events, activities, and exclusive rewards into their games as weekly updates. By doing this, the gaming industry encouraged people to adopt the use of masks and sanitizers and all the practices necessary for their health sake. By incorporating COVID-19 self-protection messages into games, the gaming industry helped the WHO to encourage people around the world to take safety measures for themselves.
- Video Games are new social media
According to a study, nowadays, games are not isolating people. Instead, it gives the players a diverse community to engage with, and now that people cannot socialize physically, the gaming industry has taken this point into account and focused on facilitating maximum social interaction in their games. Games with social interaction gave people a virtual platform to connect with people they know and also with strangers from all over the world. Hence, resulting in a visible increment in the global game traffic.
- Gaming is now the dominant form of entertainment
The world is always up for creative content, and when the pandemic significantly decreased the amount of fun content on television, the gaming industry gladly took the Sceptre in its hand. Fans of all types of physical sports like football, golf, or basketball were missing the feel of the tournaments, which was quite common till last year. So to give the audience a similar experience, the gaming industry, like Super league games, allowed the star players to live-stream themselves playing the virtual version of the games which they used to play in real life. And fans are quite happy getting the vibes of watching a tournament from home. There is no doubt that the Gaming industry has been showing a significant growth pre-Covid also but now when the television industry is running out of fresh ideas to entertain the audience, the gaming industry has just opened its creative boxes.
- A pandemic cannot change the craze for games
Video games have been popular for years, and pandemic made them even more popular. Unlike other industries, the gaming industries skyrocketed their sales in the past few months due to coronavirus lockdowns. And due to limitations in factory productions, there is a crazy increment in the price range of physical copies available in the market. We interviewed Mr. Surya Prakash, founder of Backstage Pass Institute of Gaming and technology and he said “The screentime on mobile phone and PC increased tremendously during the 2020 pandemic. The penetration of smartphones with advanced graphics support increased the demand for mobile games as compared to console games. So, more games were released during the pandemic which in turn generated huge revenues for the industry”. It’s true, people around the world turned to video and mobile games to escape reality, which directly helped the gaming industry revenue to flourish.
- Gaming, a lifelong interest
Unlike the older days, gaming is not only interesting for children. People of diverse age groups are showing equal, or we can say, more interest in games than ever. The gaming industry is enhancing the virtual experience fit for all ages, resulting in the addition of billions of dollars to the industry, which is already rich, when compared to the global box office and music industry combined. The gaming industry never fails to maintain the high expectation of its customers all over the world, making it even more difficult for people to look for other options.
- Virtual Concerts
As music concerts got canceled due to the pandemic, some well-known artists are turning to game platforms to service their fans. Grammy-nominated artist Travis Scott got featured in Fortnite. This massive hit game gave the experience of a virtual concert of 10 minutes each, in 5 days. In this concert, users got the experience of listening to their favorite artist inside a game! The stages were massive, with artist avatars as big as skyscrapers, underwater concerts inside the game, and all these experiences users got to see, sitting comfortably in their couches. How cool is that!
- VR is pushing the boundaries of the gaming experience
With the gaming industry enhancing the user experiences every day, VR games pushed their boundary much farther, shifting the market to mainstream. One of the VR game, Valves: Half-Life: ALYX, is setting the scales high for VR games. It scored a 93 per cent on the game review portal Metacritic, which is the highest rating for any VR games so far. Its detailed mechanics and gameplay is attracting more than 45,000 current users and still counting. Making it the most successful VR game to date.
But despite all the success, the gaming industry is getting amid the coronavirus pandemic; they also paid the price. The biggest gaming conventions and expo, which played a big part in the industry’s revenue, got canceled due to social measures. This caused a significant loss to the launch of new games. These games usually got launched in big conventions like E3 EXPO, which provide new games a proper exposure to the users and gaming company, helping mainly the marketing of the game. But due to the coronavirus pandemic, big companies are forced to shift these launches to live stream. Overall, the gaming industry maintained its popularity over the pandemic and continued to push forward to do the same post-pandemic.
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