Normally, hundreds of thousands of visitors - mainly young - would make a pilgrimage to the Gamescom computer game fair these days, but for the second year in a row, the fair is taking place digitally due to the corona pandemic.

As a result, it reaches more people overall, as the events are available globally through live streams and other transmissions, but there is no lively exchange between the computer gamers, who otherwise mainly meet on the screen.

For them, compared to normal gaming, the digital event changes very little, and Messe Köln misses the stand fees at the same time.

Jonas Jansen

Business correspondent in Düsseldorf.

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Nevertheless, the organizers - in addition to the trade fair, the computer game association Game - are satisfied with the response.

With around 60 international game developers and studios, more than twice as many exhibitors take part as last year.

In addition to the games forge of the online retailer Amazon or the developer studio Epic Games, which is known for the game "Fortnite", there are also companies such as Activision or Electronic Arts, Ubisoft from France or the console manufacturer Xbox, which belongs to Microsoft.

255 developers of so-called indie games, i.e. smaller games, will be added when Gamescom starts on Wednesday evening. "It is clear to everyone that a purely physical Gamescom has a different business model than a digital one," said Koelnmesse Managing Director Oliver Frese at a press conference on Monday. The conference is geared towards reach. What the trade fair and the game association have learned through their digital Gamescom variants will then be retained in the coming years. “Everything that we have built digitally can be combined with a hybrid version. We don't throw anything away, ”announced the game manager Felix Falk.

Even if the corona pandemic has hit the trade fair industry hard, the computer game industry has been spurred on at the same time. In the first six months of this year, sales of computer and video games and the associated devices such as consoles grew by 22 percent to 4.6 billion euros compared to the same period in the previous year. The game association also announced this on Monday. "In particular, the lockdown phases during the corona pandemic in the spring let many people in Germany continue to use smartphones, game consoles and PCs," said Game Managing Director Falk.

This is also confirmed by a survey published by the Bitkom digital association on Monday. Accordingly, the corona pandemic had a significant impact on the average playing time per week. While it was five hours before the pandemic, it doubled during the Corona state of emergency. Even now, the respondents expect an average of eight and a half hours a week to play. They also spend more money on their hobby. In 2020, it was a little more than two thirds who spent money on games, according to the Bitkom survey it is now 76 percent.

That coincides with the half-year results of the game association.

So-called in-game or in-app purchases were a major growth driver for the increased sales.

This means that games can usually be played for free at first, but additional content is only available for money.

The so-called free-to-play games are particularly popular; two thirds of all players in Germany have already played such games.

Six out of ten respondents also find this variant better than having to pay a fixed purchase price in advance.

At the same time, large companies such as Apple, Amazon and Microsoft are trying to bind players more closely with subscription services.