The road to recovery: The gaming industry in the pandemic
The gaming industry has gone through many changes in its relatively short history, but nothing has quite kickstarted the change like the recent Covid-19 pandemic.
It doesn’t come as any surprise that gaming quickly became one of the most popular activities during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. During the initial lockdown measures, it was by far one of the easiest ways to escape from those uncertain times. Getting lost in another world beautifully handcrafted by these artists and developers was certainly better than sitting around counting the birds outside from behind a glass window. Not to mention that for Millennials and Gen Z, it was a fantastic way to keep in contact with friends.
During the last few years, digital game purchases have grown exponentially faster than anyone could have predicted. While on a steady rise the sales of digital video games shot up to the sky during the pandemic with the inability to access physical copies of games during the lockdowns. In 2020, worldwide digital game spending on digital downloads and in-game content increased from 12% to a whopping 21%. Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt posted 91% of sales from the company were done digitally in 2020. Even Nintendo, an industry giant, despite being more angled towards the physical selling of video games saw a rise to 42.8% of revenue digitally purchased.
Video game streaming has also found massive growth since the start of the pandemic with over 1.2 billion content viewers. One of the most popular being Twitch, gaming livestreams are inherently social events as the viewers can interact with the streamer and other viewers live, they gain massive followings. Once upon a time, YouTube was the biggest site to watch gaming videos on but with the isolation rules and lockdown, many viewers migrated to Twitch as well as the content creators themselves having more free time than ever.
While at first a lot of these changes and the sudden surge of popularity would paint a nice picture for the industry and consumers alike, there was a bad side to this story. Covid-19, unfortunately, brought about the delays of many anticipated games. Although there has been an increasingly higher demand for games and the content they contain within them, the companies themselves now face the unprecedented challenge of having to shift large parts of their workforce from an office to a home environment.
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A few games did manage to release on time, most notably, Animal Crossing: New Horizons being amongst the most popular of these with incredibly high sales figures. This game was especially popular with locked down gamers as it gave an escape to a tropical paradise where they could spend their days carefree fishing and building houses. Other gamers were slightly let down, however, with the delay of the highly anticipated game The Last of Us Part II due to the coronavirus.
Jill Wallace, Head of Talent at Axis Studios had this to say about how companies have coped with the sudden changes:
How has Covid-19 impacted Axis Studios?
Axis Studios was impacted, like the rest of the world, by having to stop working in one manner and find solutions that allowed us to continue working, in another way. All the while, supporting our teams practically and mentally through what was a very difficult and scary time for everyone.
Has the working from home environment been beneficial in any way, or would it be better working from the office full time?
Working from home has many benefits, it also has many challenges. Some of the benefits included less distractions and disruptions, however, it also meant an increase in video calls for other team members. Working remotely has also allowed us to expand our international talent and we're working with artists from all over the world on an ongoing basis. This has definitely been one of the advantages of not requiring people to be onsite in the studio.
Has Covid-19 made the company change how they run things at all in terms of content creation and distribution?
We've had to adopt certain technologies for full remote teams to take part in review and feedback sessions, we've also had to adapt our pipeline in order for it to publish files differently from when people were working onsite. Because the pandemic effectively put a halt to live action filming, streaming platforms switched to content which didn't require that and consequently, a lot of animation studios have been busier than ever.
Is there any sense of normality returning to Axis after the impact of Covid-19 or do you feel there is still some way to go before things return to the way they were?
I don't think things will return to the way they were pre-pandemic, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. However, we're definitely in a groove now in terms of how we're working and producing our work, but it will be nice to get back into the studio and see some real people sometime soon.
Although the pandemic had a massive impact on how games were made and the speed at which they could be produced at first, the developers managed to find a way to adapt to these unprecedented times. The delayed products are all starting to be released now and workers are even getting to return to the workplace in some capacity. It is also a highlight that companies are now finding it easier and easier to source workers from all over the world. It is a tremendous step forward for companies to be able to work with talented individuals from the comfort of their own homes.
While things may never go back to exactly how they were pre-pandemic, the changes the industry has made in terms of developing and releasing video games will have a positive impact. The industry will continue to grow and adapt with whatever is thrown at it.