We may think we remember exactly how big
video games became in 2020 and which games dominated conversations, but we often end up overlooking some titles and figures that show what really left a meaningful impression. So a business publication for the
video game industry created these infographics to offer a snapshot of what was really happening with video games this year. We pulled out the most interesting bits, but you can see the full thing
here.
Cyberpunk 2077 and
The Last of Us Part II may have felt like the only games we talked about this year, but they weren't necessarily at the top of these lists.
1
Worldwide, video games are a $170 billion industry, beating out the entire movie industry by at least $30 billion.
2
Just looking at the most bought games gives an interesting look at the majority of gamers. Most gamers don't care about story driven narratives or character building. They just want to shoot the same enemies or play the same sport they've been playing for years. Or they want to do something cute with animals that talk like humans.
3
Downloaded games far surpassed sales of physical discs or cartridges, but it's also amazing how much money people spent on games after they already bought them. Microtransactions are scarily effective.
4
The funny thing is that Persona 5 wasn't the most talked about game by far this year. But I guess everyone liked it...
5
The fact that more outlets wrote about Fortnite this year than either Cyberpunk 2077, Animal Crossing, or The Last of Us Part II is a testament to how many goddamn updates Fortnite puts out. It's a game where nothing exciting ever happens, and yet we can't shut up about it.
6
Final Fantasy XIV won the Twitter debate by more than a quarter of a million tweets, which is quite frankly insane. We gotta find something better to talk about on Twitter.
7
By comparing the number of new game releases to the number of newly created game franchises, it's easy to see that while Nintendo dropped a lot of titles this year, they were basically all rehashed B.S.
8
This weird one isn't about animals appearing in video games, but rather the kinds of pets people who work on video games have themselves. The reason game developers all have dogs is because they need something to pull them away from their computer and force them to go outside at least once a day. And hopefully somebody checked in on the person who put down "Roomba with googly eyes" as a pet. They must've had a hard year.
9
This last one is all over the place, but it confirms that video game sales really did increase this year. In the U.S. in 2020, people spent 22% more on video games than last year. Only a pandemic could do that kind of damage.
