The gaming industry
Let’s talk about the gaming industry. Hundreds of millions of people around the world will be unboxing video games and downloading new updates this week. Adding billions of dollars to an industry that’s already richer than bith the global box office and the music business combined.
The gaming industrie,especially the mobile gaming, has been growing very fast over the last years. Games are the most popular app category in Itunes App Store and Google Play. The covid-19 crisis have also play a big role for the growth of online games. Children and their parents spend more time at home, so they play longer online games. With COVID-19 conditions keeping many indoors, mobile platforms saw grothw compared to 2019.
This growth of mobile gaming comes from the increased accessibility, as smarthphones and tables are getting more used by children. These devices, make part of the life of alpha’s. In the last years children have got more access to such devices. Accoring to the rapport from UK Ofcom media children are spending more time on their tablets and online. Bellow there are some statistics about children in the UK:
“More than one-third of kids spend more time playing video games than they were a year ago, while well over 20% are also spending more.”
Most popular Online games by children
Alpha kids love in particular 4 games: Minecraft, Roblox,Fortnite and among us. The first twoo games are more about designing and creation, Fortnite is a survival game. The popular kids game; Minecraft, has held its place amongst children as one of their favourite online games for some time now.
Minecraft
Minecraft is a massive multi player online game (MMO), which means that players enter an online world where they play the game at the same time with millions of other players from around the real world. They can interact with each other using an unmoderated chat feature and even upload their own content to create new worlds within the game where they invite others to play.
Minecraft attracts 91 million players every month. Kids can play it with friends , multiplatform , across consoles and on iOs and Android.
Roblox
Roblox is the world’s most popular kids gaming platform: over half of all kids in the US already have an account.
Roblox is a vast online platform where kids can create and interact in what its makers describe as "immersive 3D worlds." Players are given the opportunity to create an avatar (player) for themselves and allotted a small amount of digital money to rent a house.
Previously kids used to play with modest constructors made of wood or metal. Now it's user-generated, multiplatform, new online gaming systems. With games like Roblox, children can now get all the possibilities to create any world they can imagine and communicate with other players around the world.
“115 million kids and teens play an average of 20 games on Roblox per month ”
The game drops up to 100 players onto an island, where they try to find weapons to both defend themselves against and attack other players. The playable area gradually shrinks, forcing players into encounters with each other until just one player remains and is declared the winner.
There are an estimated 250 million players on Fortnite. The age rating 12+ but age is not requested when creating an account and it’s a well known secret that million of Alpha kids are passionate Fortnite players.
“Kids are becoming a more influential part of the gaming marketplace thanks to games such as Fortnite and Minecraft”
among us
Among Us is a multiplayer game where between four and 10 players are dropped onto an alien spaceship. Each player is designated a private role as a “crewmate” or “impostor.”
It’s really a game about interacting with the other players. The impostors try to divert suspicion onto innocent crew members, while the workers are busy trying to “sus” out the killer and keep suspicion off themselves
Among Us jumped to the top of online streaming charts at first because a handful of well-known gamers started playing it publicly, but it “stuck” because it was the perfect game for social distancing. It is free for mobile and cost only 5 dollar on pc.
MOre than just a industry
The massively popular game ‘Fortnite’ which accoring to parent company Epic Games sports a global gamer base of over 250 million players recently held five 10-minutes virtual concerts for grammy-award nominated artist Travis Scott from April 23 to April 25. The show pushed the limits of what virtual concerts could look like with artist avatars as large as sky-scrapers, teleportation to different dimensions, underwater stages and dazzling psychedelic worlds.
This can be a opportunity for other artists to engage with children. Maybe in the future we will see other artists giving virtual concerts to children.