The worldwide pandemic that started in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, on December 2019 and is still going on till today’s date of April 6th has affected the daily lives of almost everybody in the world. It has completely stopped the normality of most individuals and left many unemployed due to strict stay at home orders being given out to much of the world. Individuals are trying to find ways to occupy their time so that they are not constantly thinking about how the Coronavirus is impacting their lives which is a good coping mechanism. Personally, I’ve been playing video games and keeping up to date with blogs that are reporting different users joining their platforms. In the IOS store which is used for apple products, the game Plauge Inc., which portrays you as a virus spreader and your goal is to infect and kill everyone globally, saw an increase amount of sales directly after the announcement of the pandemic due to many analysts thinking that individuals were using this as a means of simulating possible outcomes to the pandemic.
Lots of multiplayer games saw a sharp increase in user activity due to many people going on the different games because of all their free time. This was complemented with the increasing amount of issues being brought up because there were so many individuals on the applications at once. All these game developers could not even fix the issues because most were either furloughed or working from home where they may not have had the resources. I know with the games I’ve been playing, there have been so many users at once where the game starts to cut out at certain points of the match. Which is not exactly normal. Companies are also having a hard time releasing games that were set to go out this month. Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Doom Eternal had the same release date and they coordinated with each other to release the load in different waves so that the platforms and the servers would deal with from the sudden downloads of their games. They also told companies like GameStop to be wary of the individuals who were not complying to the rules set in place such as social distancing. Companies have an obligation to help their customers but they are looking for ways to make it safe for their employees. It creates a weird dynamic between gaming and this pandemic but so far it is working.