A New Normal
COVID, Gaming, and Our Changing Habits
The consensus “contrarian” take is that COVID-19 didn’t create new behaviors, but accelerated existing trends. However, I would argue that COVID accelerated existing trends by radically changing the underlying behaviors propelling those trends. In fact, I’d argue that the rhythm of our COVID behaviors is entirely different from our pre-COVID behaviors. Yes, on a macro level, COVID may have simply accelerated existing trends, but life isn’t lived in aggregate. Nor are businesses built by macroeconomics.
When it comes to gaming, this behavior shift is obvious. Pre-pandemic, people were already playing more games for longer periods of time. During the pandemic, being locked inside with limited social interaction accelerated this trend. What’s fascinating about the chart above is the obvious break in trend caused by COVID: but the most interesting change is the massive reduction in deviation between weekend and weekday gameplay. This chart is less interesting for the “what” and much more interesting for the “how” of gaming habits increasing.
My friends and I joke that during COVID, time has become a flat circle: Monday is Wednesday is Sunday. June might as well be April. And for gaming, time certainly is a flat circle. Beyond simply gaming more in aggregate, we game at times of the day and on days of the week previously reserved for other activities. This trend is especially true for “newer” gamers who don’t always resemble the previous cohort, and perhaps have different gaming patterns. Since social activity is reflexive, as gaming increasingly becomes social and network-based, this change in aggregate behaviors and new cohort preferences can create feedback loops, driving behavior away from previous baselines.
All of these factors coalesce into a new behavioral pattern different from the pre-COVID world, even as the trend continues towards greater gameplay in aggregate. This is all to say that yes, COVID pulled forward a macro trend towards greater gameplay, but it did so in a highly unnatural and non-linear fashion on a micro basis.
Does this mean that gameplay will revert to its previous patterns once a vaccine is widely distributed and our lives return to their pre-pandemic routines? I doubt it. Gameplay will certainly reduce from the current peak, but I suspect it will stabilize at a higher rate than pre-pandemic rates. People who previously rarely or never gamed will stick with it post-activation, and gamers who upped their engagement will continue with deepened habits. Stable equilibriums are hard to break once established, even if the transition required an extreme variance from baseline behavior.
I suspect that gamers will settle into a new circadian rhythm, along the spectrum between pre-COVID and post-COVID habits. And I suspect this will be true for other COVID impacted behaviors, be they online shopping or food delivery or at-home movie viewing. We may have only accelerated existing macro trends, and not created new behaviors. However, the micro patterns of our new lives are in many respects completely different, and they will likely remain so.
These new micropatterns have huge implications for anyone looking to capitalize on long-term macro trends. Just like life, purchase and consumption decisions aren’t made in aggregate either. Those who adapt to these radically new consumer micro-behavior patterns will be better positioned to take advantage of accelerating, albeit evolutionary, long-term macro behavior shifts. Those who don’t adapt will be in for a shock when life returns to a new baseline and what previously appeared like a tide that would only rise, begins to ebb and flow once again.
Credit to u/lookatnum on r/dataisbeautiful