It has been a long, dark year for many, but at least for those in the United States, the danger of Coronavirus is not as severe as it was back in 2020. Players have new games to look forward to at the start of 2022, and plenty of good options right now, including the option to go outside.

That last choice is one that people have been making more and more, to the point where there's not as much time for gaming as there once was. Many turned to video games for the first time over the worst of the pandemic, or returned to an old hobby, but now that the danger has lessened, they are gaming less than before.

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According to the NPD Group, roughly half of the players who picked up gaming as a hobby have stopped playing regularly. The number of people who played video games on the regular in the United States of America jumped from 73% to 79% over 2020, but has now fallen back to 76%. Half the people who were trying it for the first time or wanted to become re-acquainted gaming have put down their controllers once more, or long time players have finally moved on.

Obviously. with the quarantine mostly lifted, players don't have to stay home and confine themselves to indoor activities anymore, but it's not just that. The gears of business are grinding back to full speed, as opposed to the crawling pace they took during the pandemic's worst, and people must once more keep up. Players don't have as much time to take photographs in Red Dead Redemption 2 anymore, as things have to get done. Despite that, players are still spending more on video games than before the pandemic.

Not only is the amount regularly being spent still going up, so is the amount of time people are collectively playing games. This is due in large part to older players picking up gaming again. Some people who saw Dark Souls appear, blow up, and turn ten years old clearly want to jump back into the gaming scene.

The upward trend in spending and time spent playing video games is definitely one that merits further examination, but the statistics of fewer people playing games with the pandemic's decline is a pretty healthy one. The fact that there's more to do than stay inside and play all day once more is a good one. After all, the pandemic did much more harm than just causing Ubisoft to change a game's name, and no one wants to experience it again.

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Source: GameIndustry