GAMES
VIDEO GAMES SURGE IN LOCKDOWN BOOM By CHRIS McGOWAN
TOP AND BOTTOM: Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons, playable on the Switch, is full of lovable characters and sold 13.4 million units in the six weeks following its March release. (Image courtesy of Nintendo)
86 • VFXVOICE.COM FALL 2020
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During the COVID lockdown, many people have passed a good portion of their free time playing video games, resulting in a spike for one of the rare industries that thrived when the pandemic took hold in the spring. Many already growing segments – such as mobile games, multiplayer games, the free-to-play model and the “battle royale” category – received an even bigger boost. The handheld Nintendo Switch enjoyed record sales. And employees across the video game industry worked remotely from home to keep development on track. “During a lockdown,” says Michael Pachter, Managing Director of Equity Research for Wedbush Securities, “people are home all the time, so they find themselves with less commute time, less preparation (grooming) and less time spent going to movies, the gym, the beach, restaurants, etc. That frees up at least two hours per day per person, and yes, they are entertaining themselves. The pickup in each entertainment medium is probably correlated to time spent there already, so TV probably [picked up] the biggest portion and games the second biggest.” April’s video game revenues illustrated that Americans were indeed busy at home with games on their PCs, cell phones and consoles. In terms of the latter, U.S. consumers spent $420 million on hardware like Sony’s PlayStation 4, Microsoft’s Xbox One and the Nintendo Switch, a staggering increase of 163% over the same month a year earlier, according to The NPD Group, a market research company. The Switch was the leader and its year-to-date dollar sales for the first four months of 2020 were the highest of any platform in U.S. history, according to NPD, breaking a record set by the Nintendo Wii in April 2009. “I’ve been working with video game sales data for over 15 years now and April is by far the wildest month I think I’ve ever seen,” NPD analyst Mat Piscatella commented on Twitter on May 22. The research firm also reported that total video game sales in the U.S. (hardware, software, accessories and game cards) reached nearly $1.5 billion in April, up 73% as compared to the same month the previous year. The gains for May, which had shorter lockdowns for many states, were not as high but still impressive: total U.S. sales reached $977 million, which was 52% higher than the same month in 2019. Square Enix’s Final Fantasy VII Remake (a PS4 exclusive until March 2021), Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons (available only for Switch), were the top three titles in April, according to The NPD Group. 2K Sports’ NBA 2K20, Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto V, Capcom’s Resident Evil 3 and Sony Interactive Entertainment’s MLB: The Show 20 were among other games at the top of the sales charts. “Games that allow players to interact with other players and help replace missing social interactions are absolutely booming. Live service games are all pushing for more content to keep up with the increased demand of their players,” comments Keith Guerrette, Founder and Studio Director at Beyond-FX. Guerrette is a visual effects artist who worked with developer Santa Monica Studio on Sony Interactive Entertainment’s God of War franchise and with developer Naughty Dog on Sony’s Uncharted series and The Last of Us franchise.
“We’re definitely seeing a surge in incoming work. We just had to turn down a project today because every one of our artists is booked. We’re looking at hiring to set ourselves up for more capacity to meet the demand. COVID turned on the floodgates to remote work because nearly every games company just went full remote. There are a lot of great tools to make this viable. Companies like Undertone FX were already set up to thrive in remote, distributed teams, and now COVID is normalizing this.” —David Johnson, Founder, CEO and Creative Director, Undertone FX For children, multiplayer video games are a great way to stay in touch with their friends when time, distance or a quarantine keep them apart. Kids’ consumer power could be felt in the big sales for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which bowed on March 20, in the early days of the pandemic, and sold 13.4 million units in its first six weeks of release, according to Nintendo. Kids also powered the popularity of Roblox Corporation’s Roblox, a free-to-play game creation system and MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online game) that has games in many genres and claims to have had 150 million monthly active users as of July. Roblox has grossed over $1 billion in revenue since its 2006 launch, according to research firm Sensor Tower. Roblox is partly a building game, like the extremely popular Minecraft. The “sandbox game,” Minecraft from Microsoft/Mojang Studios, has sold over 200 million copies across all platforms, according to Mojang, which may take it past Tetris as the best-selling video game of all time, although sales estimates vary wildly for the latter. Minecraft had 126 million monthly active users as of May 2020, according to Microsoft, and had a spike of 40% in multiplayer sessions in April. Electronic Arts’ Sims franchise, another longstanding giant, is a series of “life simulation” video games and has sold nearly 200 million total copies of its different versions, according to EA. The “free-to-play” category includes popular multiplayer “battle royale” titles like Epic Games’s Fortnite, Electronic Arts’
TOP AND BOTTOM: Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare featured superrealistic battle scenes and is one of the best-selling video games in 2020. (Image courtesy of Activision Blizzard)
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