Growth of online community formation due to COVID-19

Abstract

This paper will talk about how the recent Corona Virus pandemic has led to a significant increase in the number of virtual communities revolving around playing videogames. This paper also shows how advanced technology brought light in such dark times and how being in a virtual gaming community can benefit one’s life. Another topic disused in the paper are the issues that arose due to the formation of negatively motivated communities and how they had a major impact on the game they were not satisfied with.

Introduction

Although the Corona Virus pandemic has caused havoc all around the globe, it has also done some good such as reuniting old gamers, as well as attracting new gamers while simultaneously forming numerous communities revolving around video games. However, it has also caused massive game developers to get a lot of hate for their miss practices. Miss practices are when a game is not released at the time it was previously said that it would be released.

What is Covid-19 and what happened after it struck?

SARS-CoV-2, more commonly known as Corona Virus is believed to originate from animals and then further passed on to humans (Velavan & Meyer, 2020). The first few cases were detected in China, Wuhan but spread across the globe which turned an epidemic into a pandemic (Velavan & Meyers, 2020). It is a communicable disease which means that it spreads if a person encounters the water droplets of an infected person or touches a contaminated surface and then their face, especially their nose and mouth (Velavan & Meyers, 2020). The Corona Virus is highly contagious and has caused numerous deaths around the world. Most countries were under lockdown once they realised that the Corona Virus is a serious threat to their people which also caused educational institutes to shut down and shift to online learning (O’Sullivan et al., 2020). Workplaces made their employees work remotely and many others lost their jobs or had to face a deduction in their salaries.

Since most of the world was on lockdown, it gave people plenty of free time because they did not need to travel back and forth from their workplaces or educational institutes (Bhutani & Cooper, 2020). Not travelling also meant that they have fewer expenses which allowed some of the money not used to be saved. People had so much time that they got bored and wished life went back to how it was. Most of them chose to invest the newfound freedom of time in discovering new hobbies or picking up older ones (Lades et al., 2020). That had brought a lot of people towards gaming as they now had the time to play video games as well as spend more money on it which they did not have before (Higuchi et al., 2020). Older gaming communities were revived as they were all reunited, and even newer communities were made due to the lockdown caused by the Corona Virus pandemic (Higuchi et al., 2020).

Gaming communities before the pandemic:

Life of gaming communities before Covid simply included people who treated gaming as a purposeless time pass and not to keep in touch with people because they were busy with the events taking place in their lives. The gaming industry was worth around $120.1 billion after 2019 which was the period before Covid struck (Takahashi, 2020).

The graph above taken from Statista shows the increase of game sales during a week of March, the peak time of lockdowns around the world. Between March 16th to March 22nd, 4.3 million video game copies were sold in total (Clement, 2021a). This shows a 63% total increase of game sales from the previous week (Clement, 2021a). There was also a 44% increase in like-for-like game sales which might be because of people switching to video games as their form of entertainment and connection to the outside world (Clement, 2021a).

The graph above shows the difference between the number of gamers per billion in 2019 and 2020. In 2019 there were around 2.5 billion gamers around the world (Wijman, 2019). During 2020 it increased to 2.7 billion gamers (Clement, 2021b). This may be due to the pandemic giving people more time to spare at home and them discovering gaming as a new hobby.

How gaming communities are formed:

When there is a core similar aspect between people, they unite to form a community (Chandler‐Olcott & Hinchman, 2019). When it comes to gaming there is a community for almost everything (Gibbs, 2020). It could be people liking a game, a mode of a game, a certain gaming console, or a gaming developer, the list is endless (Gibbs, 2020). One common way virtual gaming communities form in today’s era is when the game developer also tries to take advantage of communities by giving hints instead of an actual trailer of a game (Fowler, 2021). When a developer releases a teaser for an upcoming game it makes the people who like the developer come together and form a community that attempts to decipher the hidden messages to find leads for the game. This builds hype and gets people talking about the game forcing the gaming community to grow even before the game has launched (Gibbs, 2020). Once a game launches and a group of friends enjoy playing the game, they try to make their community on the newly released game or attempt to join existing communities (Hsiao & Chiou, 2012).

Virtual community formation has become so easy as it is open to anyone who wants to start one (Fotia et al., 2017). Social media and other web 2.0 applications play a big role in finding existing communities as well as publicising a new community (Fletcher, 2017). Reddit is known for people trying to find online communities for almost every game (Carlson & Cousineau, 2020). Some gaming consoles also let people form clans in the user interface, for example on the PlayStation consoles you can join communities and find many people to play with. Communities are useful because they never let a gamer get bored (Hardwick, 2016). In most games that have the option of playing in multiplayer mode, the game developer encourages gamers to form clans that act as a community (Essa, 2020). Forming a clan in a game might give the clan members more rewards, as well as different clan exclusive content, which will be made more accessible. The best moments for any gamer are when they are playing online and making amazing memories.

Why gaming community formation increased due to Covid:

Gaming community formation has increased rapidly due to the Corona Virus pandemic (Gibbs, 2020). Since social interaction was prohibited most people tried to find interactions virtually and that is how they ended up joining a community. Most people formed communities to maintain the interaction with friends and stay close while having fun with online gaming (Perks, 2020). Virtual communities have changed the way humans interact as they are an escape from the real world (Lades et al., 2020). In virtual communities, members can freely interact with other people with similar interests, therefore, building deeper connections. Thanks to the modern advanced technology, forming and maintaining virtual communities are easy since people’s geographical locations do not matter as it is all online. (See To et al., 2016). This allows anyone with an internet connection to join (See To et al., 2016). With the Corona Virus pandemic, even real-life communities had to go online to maintain the relationship (Perks, 2020).

People who had existing communities pre-covid had the chance to be revived, reunite and play more games together and making more memories in the process (Perks, 2020). Before the Corona Virus pandemic, the people might have had a busy schedule and little or no time to play video games with their friends which made them slowly lose their hobby of video gaming.

How gaming communities becoming so popular:

Video games are now seen to make money and economies run partly due to the profit made by gaming, especially during the Corona Virus pandemic (Hall, 2020). In just 2020 the gaming industry was worth nearly 159.3 billion USD (Field Level Media, 2020). The Corona Virus pandemic and the increase in online gaming communities could have a huge role in making the gaming industry worth so much (Witkowski, 2020). Some of the video game developers have seen communities as ways to promote their game as it works well for them. Game developers do a lot to make sure there are communities for their upcoming and existing games which makes being in a gaming community more popular day by day.

Not only is it fun to be a part of an online gaming community but it also rewards gamers with many opportunities (Johnson & Woodcock, 2017). It is common for virtual gaming communities to usually have tournaments among themselves to have more fun and to see who the best gamer of their community is (Perks, 2020). Being on top of the leader board of a community can popularise the gamer’s name giving the gamer attention which creates the gamers own audience as well (Johnson & Woodcock, 2017). This allows the gamer to get deals from many famous brands and offers from esports teams who want to be associated with the gamer by making the gamer compete for their esports team. With the Corona Virus pandemic limiting real life human interactions this was the best opportunity people had on establishing their social presence as well as get opportunities that could make a living for a lifetime (Perks, 2020).

Cyberpunk community controversy:

However, gaming communities can also become harsh towards the developer at times. The communities created are not always done with a positive intention or goal in mind. There have been several communities that are created based on their negative goals and intentions. When a game does not meet its expectations, communities might unite with each other to promote hate for the game. During the Corona Virus pandemic hatred towards some video games has also increased as people have so much time to spend. For example, the game CyberPunk 2077 by CD Projekt Red, once known for being the most successful, loved, and acknowledged studio by almost every gamer owing to the success of Witcher 3 (Barbosa, 2020). CD Projekt Red kept on teasing CyberPunk 2077 for years, giving a release date for the game, but due to the unpredictable Corona Virus crisis employees were forced to work from home (Maldonado, 2020). This caused a delay in the release of the game multiple times as working remotely did not meet the expectations set. The communities for CyberPunk 2077 were very enthusiastic about the game coming out that after being delayed numerous times the community lost trust and started driving hate toward the studio (Koepp, 2020). The hate got so bad that it caused the stock for CD Projekt Red to fall by 29% which was around 1.8 billion USD which impacted the studio significantly (Purslow, 2020). The studio was worried about what to do, so they gave the community many apologies and forced its employees to work overtime to make sure they can launch the game as soon as possible. The game had finally launched on December 10 2020, the community was once again excited, and the game had broken some records by selling very well (Robinson, 2020). Then as gamers started playing the game, it was unplayable on most platforms driving the community insane (Frank, 2020). It got so bad the developers tried to launch patches to fix the game, but they did not fix much leaving the game still unplayable (Byrd, 2020). The community was once again disappointed and blamed the game developers for rushing the game (Byrd, 2020). The studio then offered refunds to whoever wanted one due to the game being unplayable, soon the gaming platforms just removed the game from the store and gave the person their money on their virtual wallet. Despite all of that happening the studio still managed to sell 13 million copies of the game (Good, 2020).

Conclusion:

To conclude, as is seen in this paper, the number of gaming communities grew after the lockdown due to people having free time and limited physical interaction. It is fair to note that once the pandemic is over, these communities will remain, however they may interact on a different level such as meeting up in person instead of solely online. This may eventually decrease the number of active online communities since people will be more out and about after the restrictions have been lifted. Although there are people who have gone back to on site work, there may still be jobs which remain solely online. The people who work with online jobs will still have enough time on their hands to remain active in their gaming communities.

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