Keza MacDonald on the year that gaming came into its own
Keza MacDonald has been writing and talking about video games and gaming culture for 15 years, across websites, magazines and TV. She was the founding editor of games website Kotaku in the UK, has served as a BAFTA Games committee member, and is currently Video Games Editor at The Guardian newspaper. Here, she unpacks the rise of gaming through the pandemic year, and how trends prevalent across the sector manifested in the winning D&AD work.
Over the course of the pandemic, shut inside with no company but our own thoughts, increasingly annoying housemates, or (for the especially unlucky) bored young children, we have had to get creative about hanging out with friends. Zoom drinks, virtual pub quizzes and livestreamed gigs became the norm, with surprising speed, and we equally quickly became fatigued with them as the months went by. And many millions of people discovered (or rediscovered) video games – not just as a way to while away the boring days and weeks indoors by ourselves, but as a way to meet up and laugh with our friends. They also – as exemplified by Xbox’s Rough Guides campaign The Birth of Gaming Tourism, which presented in-game worlds in the same way as real travel destinations – became a way for us to have new experiences and see new places at a time when that was impossible in real life.
The Birth of Gaming Tourism, McCann London
Animal Crossing: New Horizons, released just when lockdowns started rolling out across the UK and Europe in March 2020, sold over 30 million copies, and was perhaps the defining game of the Covid pandemic: a tranquil virtual island escape that offered both a soothing sense of control over a small personal paradise, and a place to hang out. Players hosted everything from parties to art exhibitions to protests on their small Nintendo oasis. Later in the year, Among Us, a game about murderously double-crossing your friends in space, became another breakout hit – a game that really came alive on Twitch, where streamers broadcast their raucous evenings of fun to audiences long deprived of real-world social contact.
“For many Millennials, and certainly for the younger Gen Z, the line between what’s real and what’s virtual was already blurred before the pandemic”
Throughout 2020 and 2021 the world has discovered something that people who play video games have always known: the experiences you have in virtual spaces – whether by ourselves or with our friends – can be as exciting and even as meaningful as those we have in real life. For many Millennials, and certainly for the younger Gen Z, the line between what’s real and what’s virtual was already blurred before the pandemic; social media has brought our online and real-life worlds and personas into such close alignment that there is barely a distinction worth making any more. Video games, Instagram and Twitch have all changed the way we interact with each other, make friends and form communities.
Now That You Mention Us, VMLY&R Kansas City
Some of this year’s D&AD Award winners, in the new Gaming category and beyond in the likes of Digital and Experiential categories, playfully and creatively experiment with this increasingly fuzzy distinction between what’s real and what isn’t – of games extending from the virtual world into the real one. In Meet Frank, a video game zombie who loves Pringles literally emerged from the screen live on Twitch in a week-long skit. Wendy, the red-haired cartoon mascot of a 50-year-old American restaurant chain, was brought to life in numerous games, from Street Fighter to Fortnite in Super Wendy's World from VMLY&R Kansas City. adidas’ GMR – Play Connected had kids playing football in real life with a smart insole that tracked their progress and improved their in-game footballers in FIFA Mobile.
“this has turned any game or campaign into a potential viral hit to distract people from the impact of the real virus”
In recent years, YouTube and Twitch have turned video games into a uniquely performative medium, as players share and broadcast their experiences to others – whether that be thousands of fans for professional gamers, or just a few friends – and this has turned any game or campaign into a potential viral hit to distract people from the impact of the real virus.
Samsung X Cyberpunk by adam&eveNYC took what was essentially a competition to win a TV and made it into a collaborative puzzle where people worked together to find the real-world location of a giant safe, and then competed to hack into it live on stream. The Joker’s Escape, a virtual journey through the brain of DC’s famous character, was another virtual experience designed to be broadcast.
The Uncensored Library, DDB Group Germany
This overlap between games and the physical world can work the other way, of course, and using the tools and language of games can teach us much about the real world. teAR Down This WALL by Virtue for The DDR Museum, shows a generation that never saw the Berlin Wall what it would look like in augmented-reality game Minecraft Earth, letting players look through their phone screen to see exactly where it was – and break it down.
The extraordinary The Uncensored Library, meanwhile, a project for Reporters Without Borders by DDB Group Germany, houses a vast treasure trove of the world’s vital literature and journalism in the world of Minecraft, where anyone with an internet connection can access it – particularly those living under repressive regimes where such works are censored. In Mexico, a game called Kiddi World helped schools to diagnose learning problems in schoolchildren in areas where formal testing isn’t an option. Campaigns like this show how video games do not exist purely as a fantastical escape from the real world, but can intersect with it in fascinating ways. They can, in fact, change the world.
Brands and institutions have been using the language of video games to reach new people for a while now. But with an estimated 3 billion players out there worldwide, the language of gamers is increasingly just the language of people. The pandemic might have helped the world to understand better why it is that we play video games, and what they offer us; not just competition, not just escapism, but also connection and enrichment.