Covid-19: "Fortnite", "Animal Crossing" ... video games, stars of (un) confinement

It's not just the series on Netflix that have been a hit on our screens since the beginning of the epidemic. Confined to the home, fans of video games have given themselves to heart to spend long moments in control. Even with the onset of deconfinement, and the hypothetical and very gradual reopening of middle and high schools, the trend is not about to reverse.

On the front line, we find adolescents who have bought many more video games than usual, the vast majority via download systems: 38% during confinement against 18% before according to a study by Xaalys bank. Another marker of this craze: the 86% increase in mentions related to video games on social networks, over the period from March 16 to April 30 compared to that from February 1 to March 15 according to the digital watch institute Brandwatch.

With his friends from the neighborhood, Hector, 13, started playing on his Switch the star game of the last two years, "Fortnite". "It's a good way to stay in touch without seeing each other," explains the college student from Clichy (Hauts-de-Seine). We meet in the afternoon online after doing our homework online and we play as a team talking with our headsets and microphones. Parents are a little less on our back and let us play more than normal when there is really school. "

VIDEO. We tested "Fortnite 2" with college students

Another title takes full advantage of the situation: "Animal Crossing New Horizons" which Nintendo sold, in a few weeks of marketing, no less than 13.41 million copies, more than the last episode of Pokémons released at the end of 'last year !

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"It is for me THE game of containment, says Julien Dachaud, known by the pseudonym Newtiteuf on social networks and on video broadcasting platforms like Twitch or YouTube (1.19 million subscribers). It's a bit like the new Sims, but in a more exotic and childlike mode, with this adventure on a desert island that allows you to escape, to offer yourself a ride by proxy while we're stuck at home. "

Each day during the confinement, Newtiteuf broadcast live several hours of his adventures on the game, advising his fans whose number has increased regularly over time. “The first week, they were between 1000 and 1500 live, to increase to more than 2000 from the third week of confinement. "

60 million regular players for “Call of Duty”

On the other home consoles (PlayStation 4 and Xbox One), but also on PC, the big winner is a much more adult game: the "battle royale" version, called Warzone, of the warlike and ultra-realistic simulation "Call of Duty ”, more than 600,000 copies sold since its release in November and second best-selling game in France in 2019 behind“ Fifa ”.

Available free since early March, Warzone got off to a flying start and has continued to gather new followers, growing from 50 million regular players worldwide to 60 million from late March to late April. Again, it is on video platforms that we can measure the craze.

"Between 1,000 and 1,500 people follow my games live on Twitch, but this figure has more than doubled in recent weeks, explains Skyrroz, one of the most watched" Call of Duty "players online by the French public (2 , 34 million subscribers on YouTube). Free play does a lot, attracting new players, but also the fact that, confined, game lovers had more time to devote to it. "