It is inevitable that the crisis arising from the spread of COVID-19 will result in more individuals staying at home during recreational time. Does this mean the Gaming and Streaming Services industries will witness a spike for the duration of the crisis?

It seems logical but it may be too early to tell without having the data.

Fortunately, for several years, I’ve been collecting hourly data on player volumes of a game I used to play in my childhood – RuneScape, through an automated script. I’ll be sharing the process on that at a later time if there is interest, however we’re not going into the weeds of it just yet.

I consumed the data in Tableau to analyze any recent spikes in average weekly volumes, and observed that for 2020, there is an abnormally high spike in the game’s player volumes occurring in the weeks leading into April, compared to previous years.

Click here to view the visualization on Tableau Public.

Thus far, this may support the hypothesis that the crisis is in fact causing a surge in Gaming.