As quarantine has left everyone confined to the indoors, people have found creative ways to spend their time. Video games are among one of these things and they have risen in popularity in recent years, but is COVID-19 the cause for this increase?
According to Statista, the number of steam accounts has increased significantly since last year. Steam is a video game digital distribution service and allows players to play a variety of games on PC, ranging from major releases to indie-games. In 2019, there were 15.99 million Steam accounts in use. When 2020 came along, the number of Steam accounts increased to 24.8 million. That’s a significant increase and it’s no secret why they increased.
Dylan Shepler, president of the Esports Club, mostly plays on steam and occasionally on the Nintendo Switch. He said he mostly plays on Steam because the games are cheap. The service occasionally has sales when “A” titles can be bought for cheap. That appeals to him, and many other gamers.
Shepler said that he used to play a lot of video games back in high school whenever he was free. However, now that he’s in college, he said that he’s been busy a lot more with classes. His gaming has been average, so he’s not spending a lot of time playing games every day.
He says that the pandemic has led to more people picking up gaming.
“There are more gamers now that the pandemic has happened,” Shepler said. “But that’s balanced out by the fact that being in person and having to be in person is a little bit dangerous for a lot of people.”
Shepler does say that it depends on the person though.
Calvin Black, a gamer, says that his gaming has increased since the pandemic started. Black said he would play games back a few times a week because he had better things to do. Now, he says his gaming has probably increased to about 250%. He said back in high school he would play two hours a day, three days a week, but now he plays four hours a day, every day of the week.
Black plays games with massive player versus player maps and team deathmatches and likes these games because he is still able to hang out with his friends, even if it’s in an online game. He says that even his friends’ gaming has increased as well.
While video games have helped him pass the time, Black doesn’t expect all the time he spent playing video games to be permanently involved in his schedule.
Ryan Hill can be reached at [email protected]