More games want more of your time than ever before, you've probably noticed. If they're not after your money, they're after your time, so you spend all the free hours you have grinding for that next battle pass level or limited-time skin. It's a trend we're only likely to see increase, as companies will be forced to make the most out of a shrinking gaming population.
According to research by industry analyst Matthew Ball (via PC Gamer), gaming populations have been shrinking in major markets across the world. You'd expect that when comparing the figures to pandemic levels, as people had little else to do except game during the COVID-19 lockdowns. However, we're getting to a stage now where the number of gamers is dropping below the numbers it saw prior to the height of the lockdowns in territories like the US and Canada.
Why is this? Well, it seems that video games are losing the war for our attention. In the same period analysed by Ball (2020-today), we see that TikTok watch time increased by 50 million hours in the US. Spending on OnlyFans also more than doubled in the same time frame. In layman's terms, gooning and scrolling is beating gaming these days, it seems.
For gamers and game companies, this is a bad sign. The gamers that are left are feeling the squeeze, as developers and publishers are entering an increasingly competitive market, where they have to make you want to play their game more than the titles you already know and love. We've seen the signs of this for a time now, but to see it displayed so clearly by the data from Ball shows that video games really are in a time where growth is an incredible struggle for companies.