Games in 2020

BY: ALESSIO CACIOTTO

This year has undoubtedly been one of humanity’s worst years, with racial injustice, COVID “19”, and maybe now the election (for certain people). It’s clear that this year hasn’t been a good one, but some good things have still come out of it. Specifically, gaming. Lots of games have become immensely popular, such as Among Us, Fall Guys, and yes, still Fortnite.

All of these games have helped so many people play with their friends, talk to each other, I also think that these games have also helped people feel a bit relieved with everything that is going on. 

One game that has been a huge hit is Among Us. This game is full of strategy and is basically a space mafia. In the game, there are 10 people and 1 or 2 or 3 murderers/imposters are supposed to kill all the other crewmates. That’s the role of the imposter(s). As for the crewmates, their goal is supposed to 1) either do all of their tasks and win the game, or 2) try to vote out the imposters while there is a meeting. This game has become a worldwide sensation. According to Republicworld.com, this game has gotten a huge amount of downloads. It’s unreal.

The website says, “The multiplayer game has also crossed 100 million downloads on Google Play and the Apple App Store.” Take a moment to think about that. This game has gotten a total of 100 million downloads alone on just Google Play and the app store. Then there is Steam, which is a software for PC that has a lot of games on it. According to express.co.uk, “Among Us was downloaded almost 42 million times on Steam.” That means that in total, “this game” has been downloaded almost 150 million times. And in comparison, there are 7.7 billion people alive on earth so that means that around 1/50 of the world population plays Among Us.

Also, according to Oliver Matthews, a long-time Among Us player  “This game helps me relieve my stress, especially with COVID, even though this game is full of stress it still helps me relieve my stress, and I feel that there will be more people that feel this way.” This shows that although this game is full of stress and hoping that you don’t get killed or find out that you are the killer, it still does make people feel comforted and relaxed. In addition to this, this game has brought so many YouTubers and streamers so much content. Some of these ones are Sykkuno, Lazarbeam, Loserfruit and thousands more. This game has provided so much entertainment and content for everyone around the globe and I can safely say that 2020 would have been worse without this game.

The next game that has been a huge hit is Fall Guys. This game has been a really interactive experience, because people can customize their avatar and get cool cosmetics. And like Fortnite, this game also has a party feature that allows you to play with your friends. This game is about you and 59 other people doing challenges and death courses, and slowly, every round, people lose because they don’t qualify in the next round. so after a few rounds one person reaches the end and gets the golden crown, which is when they are deemed winner.

The avatars in this game are very interesting character designs because even though this game has a “death course race”, it’s very cartoonish and all of this violence is covered up by cool jelly bean-like characters. And honestly, this game was a big hit for only two weeks. According to an article published by Zorg, “On August 13, around a week after the official release of the title, NextGenPlayer reported 10 million downloads (8 million on PS4, and 2 million on Steam).”  This is huge. Imagine for one second if you just made a game and just one week after its release it’s become one of the most famous games around the world. You would feel amazing. And not only that, according to the same human and the same article, “The viewing figures on Twitch are also more than convincing. As of August 13, it was estimated that more than 23 million hours were watched on the platform.”

Let that sink in. This is the number one streaming platform in the world, and on August 13, just a few days after the game’s release, it already had 23 million hours of watch time. This is amazing not just for the creators getting millions of downloads per day, but also that the streamers were able to rise up and become really popular. It was very devastating because for a few weeks this game was a huge hit and people from around the globe were going mad about it. But then everything stopped. Suddenly, it was like the game was never even a thing. The game went from Zero to Hero and then back to Zero.

According to the Daily Guardian, in an article written by Keith Stuart, the game and the game creators were simply not prepared. He says that in order for a game to be successful they need to have servers so the game can function. But in order to have these servers you need to pay lots and lots of money for the companies that work these servers for the game. And since the game has been such a huge hit, the game creators had to get more and more servers or else the game would have a world wide failure. But with them buying more and more servers, well let’s just say that it went a little bit out of their budget. They could not afford to run thousands of servers at once so then everything just stopped. I could definitely say that I feel really bad for the game creators and I hope that one day they can rebuild this game back to where it was before. 

In conclusion, all of these games have amazing attributes and have been really fun to play. They have helped people cope with the virus, relax, and have a fun time.