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You’re trapped in a lockdown, but that doesn’t mean you can’t visit a tropical island, a space station, or have a game night with your friends; Certain video games have filled a confined world’s need for a bit of adventure and socializing distraction and achieved unexpected success during the pandemic.
Animal crossing
No adversaries or competition in “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” which came out in March for the Nintendo Switch console. Instead, players explore an island, collect fruit and make tools and furniture, trade with others, as the seasons slowly change.
This version of the game certainly hit the spot with gamers hungry for a little light-hearted fun. It was at the top of the sales charts in the United States in March 2020 and was also among the best sellers in other countries. It was the number two title in Europe for 2020 overall, according to GfK.
“The resounding success of Animal Crossing is explained by two factors: one is an underlying trend towards family games and the other is the short-term factor of confinement,” said Nicolas Vignolles, director of the French association of video game publishers SELL. .
He said that parents suddenly faced with being confined with their children looked to video games for family entertainment options and that “Animal Crossing was an ideal game for parent-child interaction.”
Nintendo’s head in France, Philippe Lavoue, has acknowledged the company’s lucky moment to launch the game just when many people needed an escape.
“But we are glad that we have helped confined people to feel less alone and to escape mentally,” he told the French daily Le Figaro.
Among us
The success of “Among Us” in 2020 came as a huge surprise to the industry, as the title attracted little attention when it was originally released in 2018.
But its developers at the American studio Innersloth kept refining its concept, which paid off when some prominent game streamers on Twitch started playing it on the platform in mid-2020.
In November, the game had 500 million players, according to Superdata, which monitors the gaming industry.
The online multiplayer game takes place in a spaceship. Most of the people are crewmates, but several are imposters who want to kill or at least block their crewmates from carrying out their assigned duties. Lively debates ensue as crewmates attempt to unmask the impostors.
The popularity of the game has even seen US lawmakers join parties streamed on Twitch in an effort to reach young voters last year.
For the French game publisher Nicolas Vignolles, it is the exchanges between players that explain the popularity of the game.
“Among Us at the intersection of social media and video games,” he said, noting that nearly one in two gamers in France say that video games help them create social relationships.
“That didn’t exist before … This underlying trend has accelerated with lockdown,” Vignolles said.
Ring Fit Adventure
If exercising and playing video games are usually two contradictory activities, “Ring Fit Adventure” unites them.
The game works with the Switch console, whose controllers are attached to a Pilates ring and a leg strap.
Once equipped, players can battle monsters or be guided through fitness routines on television.
Gym closures coupled with lockdowns fueled a surge in sales, prompting a shortage last year after consumers bought four million units between October 2019 and July 2020.
FIFA 2021
The interruption of many football matches and the postponement of the European Championship may have sparked the interest of fans to play virtually. According to GfK, Electronic Arts’ FIFA 2021 was the best-selling video game in 2020.
Board and card games
If chess boards and Uno cards graced the tables in many homes more frequently during lockouts, their video game versions did too.
One sign of that is that a collection of classic board games for the Switch was among the top sellers for the console in France last year, Nintendo told Le Figaro.
“The great lesson of the lockdown was that video games have definitely broken the stereotype of a game that can make people withdraw and isolate themselves,” said Nicolas Vignolles.
“They were an incredibly effective antidote to isolation.”
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