The video game industry has been growing fast. One of the biggest growth contributors is online competitive mode (multiplayer), which means millions of players from all around the world, interacting with each other online. Chatting to players, playing, making new friends, creating a party with your friends, these are just some of the things that players do on a normal day to day bases.
Sounds a lot like what everyone’s doing under lockdown, right? But Gamers have long been criticised by “Normalos” for doing exactly this. We have been laughed at anti-social losers, living in our parents’ basement, drinking sugary caffeine drinks with crisp crumbs on our shirts, playing games and screaming abuse at the screen.
Until now, we’ve been criticised for playing games and socialising online rather than doing it face to face. Along with social distancing, however, our day has come! Instead of being viewed as anti-social weirdos, it turns out that we always were what everyone else is now supposed to be.
Gamers are the new ‘Normalos’ – get used to it.
The irony is that they have become us without even realising it. They are stuck indoors. We love to stay indoors. They are playing games to pass the time. We are just doing what we always did. They are doing conference calls to stay in touch with groups of friends. We’ve been doing group parties for years now. They even started to do Netflix-watch parties, which sounds a lot like what we call share-play.
Since lockdown was introdcued, video game sales have skyrocketed. In the USA sales for gaming hardware, software and accessories, jumped 35% to $1.6 billion last month from a year earlier, according to data from research firm NPD. In the same week that social distancing measures were announced, video game sales enjoyed a 200% bump in sales. Millions more people are now a regular part of the gaming community.
Don’t worry, Newbies, we won’t treat you like outsiders. You are one of us now. You may have criticised us before, but we won’t hold that against you since you’ve come to realise that gaming is a good way of keeping people happy and connected.
Stay indoors and keep gaming – you know it makes sense!
