Press coverage in the gaming world seems to have turned a corner as we saw a dramatic uptake in activity in week 12. A significant amount of the overall gaming press for the week belonged to first place Doom Eternal. Doom’s most significant PR subjects broke down as follows: review 17.9%, retailer 17.9% and guide/how to/walkthrough 14.8%, typical of a new release. Animal Crossing: New Horizons grabbed the number two spot after a huge 327% increase in activity week on week. New Horizon’s main subjects differed from the norm for a new release mainly because of the nature of the title. 31.5% of Animal Crossings press came under the guide/how to/walkthrough which makes sense with the hidden complexities built into the game. Retailer made up 9.1% of the game’s PR followed by, other video at 7.7%. Third place went to Resident Evil 3 in a rather lopsided media week for the title. 44.3% of the RE3 press centred around the demo topic as fans and media alike got their hands on a chunk of the final game ahead of launch. Rather amusingly fans were able to modify elements of the demo to their desire which led to the fan creations subject taking a 13.6% chunk of the overall PR. Fortnite remains, once again, in the top ten. Epic games evergreen battle royale ended up in fourth in week 12 with only a small amount of variation in activity amounts week on week. The breakdown of Fortnite’s PR followed a fairly typical layout with 20% in-game features, 20% eSports, 12% retailer and with the remaining subjects accounting for smaller percentages. As far as topics discussed within the press, all the stories varied with no one news happening dominating the discussion. Still maintaining a position in the top ten, in at fifth, was the Final Fantasy VII Remake. Amid delay discussions related to Covid-19, retailers was the most talked about subject for FFVII, making up 25%. Another 25% of press came under the in-game features topic as articles talked about which content would return in the remake. The next sizable chunk of press came under the first looks/impressions at 12.5% as outlets talked about their hands-on experience with the title. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare managed to grab sixth place despite a 50% decrease in activity week on week. In-game features was the most covered topic at 14%, a lot of the discussion was on additional modes which may be added in the future. Retailer was up next with 10% as various shops offered deals on Modern Warfare. Storyline was 8% of the games overall press as it was mentioned within articles about the South Korean rating for an unannounced Modern Warfare 2 remaster. Joining its full game counterpart, a place below, at seventh was Call of Duty: Warzone. The battle royale sister title was talked about in almost the same amounts as the main game but had a different breakdown of topics. Sales/player numbers was the biggest chunk of the Warzone press as the impressive amounts of players flocking to the game were released by Activision, the topic made up 30.1% of the PR. Much like Modern Warfare, in-game features was a popular topic with 26% followed by leak/rumour/speculation at 8.2% with both topics talking about possibly leaked content for the game in the future. Overwatch made a surprising return to the top ten at eighth, its first time in the top ten this year. Overwatch had two main subjects which provided the bulk of its coverage. The first was eSports, as usual, with news about the Overwatch League making a fully online debut as a result of Covid-19 complexities. The second highly covered topic was character with news starting to roll out about 32nd hero Echo. Ninth place in week 12 was claimed by League of Legends. League’s coverage continued in the same format of which we’ve seen week on week since the start of the year, 85.7% of the coverage on eSports and the rest of the press spread across other subjects in much smaller amounts. Assassins Creed Odyssey also made a surprising return to the top ten snagging the tenth spot. The big news here was that Ubisoft began selling the title on Steam which led to a bump in coverage which spread across relevant topics as follows: retailer 29.4%, daily deals/offers 23.5% and sales/player numbers 11.8%.
