The gaming industry has observed a turbulent 2020 so far, with a lot of difficulty coming post-coronavirus outbreak around the world. According to a June 2019 insights report by analysis firm Newzoo, it was hypothesised that the global gaming industry would have a valuation of US$152 billion with 45% of that, US$68.5 billion, coming directly from just mobile games.
Such numbers are encouraging for industry giants who are now finally giving back to the community. On April 14, Sony-owned PlayStation announced Play At Home, similar to the world’s continued efforts to stay at home in order to flatten the curve and fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
What is Play At Home?
- But lockdowns and social distancing has led to more gameplay hours, as seen on gaming live-streaming platform Twitch. According to analytics site Twitch Tracker:
- In the first 14 days of April, 774 million hours of gameplay was viewed with more than 2,477,731 average concurrent viewers.
- The entirety of March observed 1,218 million hours of gameplay with 5,080,031 active streamers (around 2 million more than those in February).
An April 14 blog post by Jim Ryan, President & CEO at Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), wrote, “People all over the world are doing the right thing by staying home to help contain the spread of COVID–19. We are deeply grateful to everyone practising physical distancing and take our responsibility as a home entertainment platform seriously, so we are asking our community to continue supporting the safe choice and the need to Play At Home... [This initiative] has two components: first, providing free games to help keep the PlayStation community entertained at home; and finally, establishing a fund to help smaller independent game studios who may be experiencing financial difficulties continue building great experiences for all gamers.”
Developer Naughty Dog LLC (known for the Crash Bandicoot franchise, The Last Of Us series and the Uncharted franchise) announced via a Facebook post on April 14, “We may be apart, but we’re all in this together. Naughty Dog is proud to support PlayStation’s #PlayAtHome initiative and offer up the entire Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection on PS4 free to everyone until May 5. Stay home and stay healthy, friends!”
The Nathan Drake collection includes Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, but excludes The Lost Legacy, a spin-off game. The Uncharted series, over the years, has broken numerous gaming industry sales records; Uncharted 2: Among Thieves sold more than 6 million copies while Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End sold more than 16 million copies.
A screenshot from Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, with Sam Drake and Nathan Drake
There is more excitement building around the Uncharted games, as a feature film is currently in pre-production. Spiderman: Far From Home actor Tom Holland is to play Nathan Drake and Mark Wahlberg will portray Victor Sullivan. Antonio Banderas is also on board, though his role is currently unknown.
Plus, creative funding
While reputed developers and studios such as Tencent and Activision Blizzard state the gaming business is booming, the global lockdowns and quarantines have unfortunately massively dented the financial situations of many smaller independent gaming studios.
That said, Ryan continues in his blog post, “Independent developers are vital to the heart and soul of the gaming community and we understand the hardships and financial struggles that many smaller gaming studios are facing. With that, SIE has developed a fund to support them during this time. We have earmarked US$10 million to support our independent development partners.” He concludes that more information about this funding will be disseminated in the near future.
Sony and PlayStation recently announced the DualSense wireless controller to be launched in the winter months of 2020, but gamers and industry analysts are skeptical about the gaming calendar ahead. So far, fans are yet to see what the PlayStation 5 even looks like, which has long been a point of contention for potential buyers. The gaming calender, owing to the ongoing pandemic, has been understandably thrown off course; several games launches including those of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Last Of Us Part 2 have been postponed.
