2020 shaped up to be quite an unusual year. Thanks to the coronavirus health pandemic outbreak, we’re seeing quite the massive change in how we go about our normal daily routines. We’re practicing our social distancing and avoiding gathering in large numbers to avoid spreading this harmful virus. The fact of the matter is that we’re going through these changes together and it may be a while before we get some of those normal activities or daily routines back to how they were before 2020.
For instance, we’re not seeing the big conferences, expos, conventions, live shows, and concerts. They’ve all been cancelled again as an effort to avoid spreading the virus. Jobs have also been transitioned when possible to working remotely and that’s the case for practically every industry. For the video game industry, studios have started to work remotely while they also gave up on big expos such as E3 to further promote or showcase content coming out in the near future.
As a way to still provide a showcase, we’re seeing several studios and companies work on pre-recorded videos and uploading them for a stream. This has been working out on a few different levels. For one, we have these massive studios saving money from throwing big live event shows. Any errors are cut and again content is still able to go out for viewers to enjoy. Furthermore, the ability to showcase more content is available in these events so we’re getting more content spread out over the course of months rather than crammed in a few days at something like E3.
Ubisoft for instance has been holding their own streams. Dubbed the Ubisoft Forward, gamers are able to see what content is coming out from the studio in a short 45-minute online video showcase. There have been two streams so far and during the latest stream event, Ubisoft confirmed that more Ubisoft Forwards would happen. We’re not sure when the next one will be, but at the very least, it looks like we’ll continue to get some new content rolling out on a regular basis from Ubisoft.
