The rise and rise of video games
Covid-19 has drawn renewed attention to an under-appreciated industry
AS
THE COVID-19 pandemic has forced billions of people around the world to
spend more time at home, the entertainment business has sprung into action to capture their attention,
with live-streams of concerts, opera performances, museum tours and
more. Nielsen, a market-research firm, reckons that during past crises
Americans spent 60% more time in front of the TV; reports from Italy and
South Korea suggest that the number of people who watch television each
day is up 12% and 17% respectively.
The
impact on the video-game industry may be even greater, as many take up
the pastime or increase the amount of time they play. According to
Verizon, overall video-game internet traffic has increased 75% since
restrictions were imposed in America. Bungie, a video-game developer,
says that average daily user engagement on their game “Destiny 2”
is up 10% worldwide and as much as 20% in the markets most affected by
the coronavirus. (Ndemic Creations’s “Plague, Inc”, a mobile game in
which the user assumes the position of a deadly pathogen, became the
bestselling app in China during the outbreak.) Steam, a leading online
retailer of video games, recently hit a peak of 20.3m concurrent
players, 11% above the previous high. Twitch, which allows gamers to
live-stream videos of their game-play, has seen its average viewership
more than double.
This reflects the
social nature of video games today. Many analysts and industry leaders
see them as social networks more than a digital version of a board game
or an interactive movie. Players use these games as a way to connect
with and spend time with their friends, just as teens once loitered at a
shopping centre or spent hours on the phone after school. Today the
most popular titles are based around multiplayer experiences that are
updated with new content and challenges daily, and which go far beyond
combat-based games such as “Call of Duty” or “Street Fighter”.
“Grand
Theft Auto”, for example, launched a virtual casino last year which
allows players to hang out while essentially gaming for real money
(several countries have banned this feature). In “Roblox” and
“Minecraft”, both of which have more than 100m monthly active users and
amass more than 1bn hours of playtime a month, players build their own
games, or play those built by others, rather than those developed by
Mojang or Roblox Corporation. A community of Minecraft players in China
recently recreated, at scale, the hospitals built in Wuhan following the
covid-19 outbreak, in a tribute to the builders and hospital workers on
the front line.
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