“Grand Theft Auto”, for example, launched a virtual casino last year which allows players to hang out while essentially gaming for real money (several countries have banned this feature). In “Roblox” and “Minecraft”, both of which have more than 100m monthly active users and amass more than 1bn hours of playtime a month, players build their own games, or play those built by others, rather than those developed by Mojang or Roblox Corporation. A community of Minecraft players in China recently recreated, at scale, the hospitals built in Wuhan following the covid-19 outbreak, in a tribute to the builders and hospital workers on the front line.
These new records have helped highlight the growing but under-appreciated cultural role of video-gaming entertainment. Excluding hardware, consumers now spend $120bn per year on video gaming globally, according to Nielsen: this compares to roughly $30bn on recorded music and $42.5bn at the box office. The market capitalisations of major game publishers such as Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts are several times higher than former Hollywood stalwarts ViacomCBS, MGM or Lionsgate. Disney shattered box-office records in 2019, but still fell short of Microsoft’s Xbox gaming revenue.
Most analysts expect this growth to continue in step with gaming’s increasingly sophisticated capabilities. Physical fitness is one potential application, especially amid the coronavirus. Nintendo’s “Ring Fit Adventure”, a role-playing game that requires the player to perform fitness routines and other physical activities, has quickly become scarce in stores. Meanwhile, professional sports teams such as the Phoenix Suns and Dallas Mavericks have begun offering digital versions of their fixtures on NBA 2K in order to keep basketball fans engaged amid the suspension of the season.
As gaming consolidates its share of leisure time, it is also expanding into television and film. “Detective Pikachu” was the 18th-highest-grossing film worldwide in 2019, while “Sonic the Hedgehog” currently ranks 2nd in 2020. Most television networks, including Netflix, Amazon and Showtime, are reportedly working on their own adaptations of video games, including that of Microsoft’s Xbox blockbuster, “Halo”. Only days before the WHO declared that covid-19 had become a global pandemic, HBO, the leader in premium television, announced it was working on a series based on “The Last of Us”, a PlayStation game set in a post-apocalyptic future in which America has succumbed to a viral outbreak. Overseen by the Emmy award-winning creator of “Chernobyl”, Craig Mazin, it is a game which no doubt will feel a little uncanny.
