Gaming Is Having A Moment
By: Robert Potter
Tags: Video Game News, Games, Videogames, Gaming

According to Verizon, U.S. video game usage during peak hours has gone up 75 percent since the quarantine first went into effect weeks ago. Alaina Demopoulos, writing for The Daily Beast, states that “ Steam, a video game distribution service and forum, reported a record number of 20 million users last weekend.” Retail outlets have been struggling to keep with demand for the Nintendo Switch. Kyle Orland, writing for Are Technica, says “ The Switch is currently unavailable at Amazon, GameStop, Walmart, Best Buy, Target, and other major online retailers, though some local stores may still have spotty availability. When new stock does come in to these online stores, it tends to be gone in less than an hour.” The New York Times reports that, “ Viewership numbers on Twitch leapt 31 percent from March 8 to March 22, according to Arsenal.gg, a data analytics firm. (By then, one in four Americans was under shelter-in-place orders.) During that two-week span, the numbers of hours a day watched on Twitch rose to 43 million from 33 million. “

Sales of video games have skyrocketed as well. Eustance Huang, writing for CNBC, says “ Nintendo’s latest installment of its Animal Crossing franchise, titled New Horizon, was released on March 20 and sold more than 1.8 million copies in its first three days in Japan, according to video game publication Famitsu. In the U.K., the title sold more copies in its first week on the shelves than the launch sales of all previous entries in the series combined.” Doom Eternal, the gory sequel to the 2016 reboot, according to Bethesda and id Software, had its best opening weekend in franchise history, doubling the sales number of its predecessor. Blizzard’s new battle royale, Call of Duty: Warzone, debuted recently, accumulating over sixteen million players in under a week.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the gaming industry is in a unique position to not only weather the pandemic, but come out on the other side stronger than it was before. Whether it’s virtual weddings, digital therapy, or morbid escape, video games are being put front and center in many people’s lives for the first time. The question becomes then whether the games we play can adequately step up and fulfill those needs now, more than ever.

People crave connection, a goal not new to the gaming industry, which has long made it its mission to bring people together, tell impactful stories, and promote diversity in any way it can. Historically though, these efforts by gaming companies to bring us closer together have repeatedly butt up against a real past of misogyny, harassment, racism and discrimination. Even now, harassment of all sorts still runs rampant in many online gaming communities today, whilw the effectiveness of measures taken to overcome these issues has been bumpy at best. Natalie Morris, writing for Metro, says “ A 2019 study found that two-thirds of gamers have experienced serious harassment while playing online, much of it involving racist threats. 53% reported being targeted based on their race, religion, ability, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. And these aren’t always empty threats, the researchers found that ‘an alarming 29% of online game players have been “doxed” in an online game, meaning that their personal or private information was publicly exposed against their wishes.” State of Racism: ‘Black women are being targeted in online gaming forums’Online gaming is supposed to be fun. And, when you’re controlling digital avatars and characters — it really shouldn’t…metro.co.uk

Combine this with countless examples of over-sexualizing women, firing women developers for baseless causes, harassing game developers, and the nurturing of a robust culture of demeaning women and people of color among many other things and you get a recipe for what could be disastrous. This is not to say there has not been progress. There most certainly has. It would be hard to argue that the gaming industry is less diverse, less inclusive, and less accessible than it was two decades ago, but with such an influx of new gamers it does seem prudent for companies to ramp up their efforts to make the gaming experience as smooth as ever.