It seems that we’re at the end of the global COVID-19 pandemic that shook the world for more than 2 years. During the pandemic, people had to get used to living life in a very different way – perhaps by playing free slot games in the comfort of their own homes. Social contacts were heavily discouraged, and many people were left to their own devices in their homes. As a direct result, many industries took a significant loss, with tourism at the forefront. However, some industries have, paradoxically, expanded and experienced tremendous growth during the pandemic. One such industry is the gaming industry.
The Merits of Videogames
We’ll start our review by mentioning the importance of play. Humans have an intrinsic need to play and have some leisure time – playing games helps us relax and expand our minds to think in a novel, unusual way. In a time when playing is considered a loss of time, as being unproductive, it’s more than ever essential to keep this activity in our spare time.
That being said, humans are also intrinsically drawn to play. This is why video games have been so popular ever since the first games came out. People are drawn to losing themselves in the vast worlds that video games have been known to contain. And if the playtime is held – i.e., not taking several hours a day, each day- we would say that playing video games is an excellent way to relax and have fun.
There’s more than one way to enjoy a video game, too. There are multiple genres of videogames that different people enjoy, including:
- First-person shooters,
- Real-time strategies,
- Turn-based strategies,
- Multiplayer online battle arenas,
- Massively multiplayer online role-playing games,
and many others. If you’re a gamer, we won’t have to mention some of the biggest developers in gaming, such as Blizzard, Activision, EA, Ubisoft, and others. Lastly, there are loads of different games that players can enjoy playing, both popular, mainstream, triple-A games, and independent, indie games. This means that players have an extensive choice of different games that they can be entertained by whenever they feel like it.
The Gaming Industry During the Pandemic
So, it’s all the more obvious why the gaming industry has experienced unprecedented, never-before-seen growth during the pandemic. With COVID-19, most people were forced to stay home, keeping social distance. Regardless, people will always need to be social with their peers in whatever way possible. What’s one of the best ways to remain social while keeping a safe distance from others? By playing video games, more people became recluses due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and many of them began playing video games to have fun, be social, and pass the time. This is the main reason why the pandemic has had a tremendously positive influence on the gaming industry. The number of people who have started playing video games during the pandemic has reached an all-time high because of the already-mentioned reasons.
Videogame developers were sure to make a note of this. So, they started to create better, more fun products at an ever-faster rate. This helped attract the attention of an even more significant number of players that had no other way to escape the grim reality of the pandemic than playing video games. This created a spiral, and the gaming industry experienced a once-in-a-lifetime growth, with millions of people remaining home and playing video games.
The Gaming Industry Beyond the Pandemic
Even though the COVID-19 pandemic is nearing its end and people have relaxed – the gaming industry is still going strong. After all, there are thousands of high-quality video games available to play. People will always be attracted to playing them because they offer a nice, fun escape from reality. So, even now, the gaming industry is still strong, with many more people getting drawn to the illustrious world of video games.
Of course, as the pandemic reaches its end, we expect that there will be a slight decrease in the worldwide interest in video games. But given how important video games have become for people, we hope this decrease will be negligible – and we expect the gaming industry to continue to grow and expand in the long run.