Over three billion people worldwide now play video games, study reports
nintendosmash.com
nintendosmash.com
https://blog.selfshadow.com/publications/s2020-shading-cours...
From a brief wiki search, it seems outside of Nintendo, studios only tend to have one-hit wonders. I never played the Infamous games, but will take you on your word on Ghosts of Tsushima.
- Witcher 3 brought me back to gaming after a 10+ year hiatus. While not perfect, it's the best/most immersive game I have ever played. Thanks to truly incredible writing, an interesting, engaging world where small side quests are some of the best content, good graphics that still hold up very well (especially with mods on PC, but just fine on console). All built on a foundation of very solid combat and gameplay.
- "Nier Automata" is an unusual experience that smoothly blends very different combat styles and has a mind-boggling, thought-provoking story.
You can pick up the story just fine, and 1+2 aren't remotely close wrt quality.
But it most DEFINITELY had pacing issues around the swamp area.
Witcher 1 was a good game for its time, but unless you consider yourself a serious fan of the universe, I would recommend skipping. It's the only one in which Sapkowski was involved, it has some very good dialogues in random places and it's the only one which gives you a very good feel for what a "normal" Witcher's life is. But the voice acting is only good in Polish, up to the point it's recommended everyone use Polish audio with subtitles if they don't speak the language. And the plot is quite disconnected from the books -> Witcher 2 -> 3 line (I'm really bummed we never got closure on the plot of 1).
I'm so glad I gave it a chance, because battle androids in maid costumes was not something that got my attention for the right reasons. Skill Up's review on YouTube is what tipped me over the edge - he expressed he had many of the same concerns going in.
And surprisingly affordable (10 bucks!) considering the quality of such entertainment.
It also manages to avoid, for the most part, the pitfalls open world games fall in to (huge spans to cross with nothing happening, fetch missions, collect missions etc).
Infiltrating and exfiltrating a compound, whichever way you can think of, in the Afghan desert with none of the fancy SONAR or gadgetry of other MGS titles is what the series has clearly wished it was since day one.
That sounds exactly like “The Wild Geese”, the movie Kojima got the idea for stealth gameplay from: https://youtu.be/G0xy-XdMqS4
I'm getting a PS5 this winter or next year, chiefly because of the Horizon Zero Dawn sequel – I desperately want to see where they take the story.
And of the ones already mentioned: God of War, The Witcher 3, Horizon Zero Dawn, Ghost of Tsushima.
The Infamous games were ok. Not great, but not bad. Ghist of Tsushima is vastly better than their previous titles, IMHO.
Personally I think I'm going to wait until the PS5 releases and then see if I can find a secondhand PS4 pro at a good price.
HZD is a compelling, interesting, and challenging game.
And LoU2 being woke was also a turn-off for me.
technically perfect
storywise and characterwise a shitfest though
So damn good.
It's also worth watching a couple of YouTube reviews of Ghost of Tsushima. I recommend the ACG and SkillUp reviews.
I think if you do this you'll be better placed to judge if he's emotionally ready or not.
Let's be honest here: videogames aren't nearly as elaborate as many of them were just one or two decades ago, when many developers were having fun making them and putting in tons of effort without as many market constrictions and demands. Then you have, on the other hand, indie games, which tend to be just a glorified demo which uses technical limitations to its advantage, mainly aesthetically.
If somebody showed me how videogames would look when I was a kid, in 2000, twenty years in the future, I would have been incredibly disappointed. Besides them looking more immersive and VR being far more advanced, I'd have expected that the player had become an active participant, the effective subject of the game, instead of a passive spectator that just consooms whatever's put in front of them without any critical thought.
My subjectively positive experience of video games already declined, right around when yours peaked, even though by pretty much any standard, these newer games were better than the ones that came before them.
What? That's a wrong assumption on your part. No, you are characterizing my experiences with video games as a kid arbitrarily to support your own argument, which is--I think--just a fallacy: "the world's always been the same, it's you what's changed and you are just referencing fond but ultimately biased memories". I expected more from video games when I was a little kid, that's the whole point of my comment, so I didn't glorify them, even as a kid, to the point of having my judgement significantly clouded.
Same thing when people criticise heavy smartphone usage, for instance: "well, people watched more TV then; it's always been the same. You miss being young". You couldn't take your TV virtually everywhere, so the extent to which people distracted themselves and neglected their lives was less.
>by pretty much any standard, these newer games were better than the ones that came before them.
Watch this (or almost any other video from crowbcat): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWVtZJo-HqI. This is the tendency in video games: less resources, less elaboration; higher prices for the whole game (DLCs, Season Pass, etc.). As with anything, it's "reduce the costs, increase the benefits", as well as "make it more addictive", even at the expense of the product's quality.
I'm afraid it's as clear as day, but anyhow, you have it on the video's description: "Physics, gunfight, AI, melee combat, controls, interiors, multiplayer freedom". In GTA IV, almost everything looks more elaborate and polished, and it came out five years before the franchise's next instance.
EDIT: Another example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JalWT8oNxhk.
It really seems like the same phenomenon I experienced with the latest first generation Pokemon remake. It has more resources, immersion, and engagement than the original releases in 1996 by any objective standard - but it feels less engaging, in some nonspecific way I've never been able to communicate to anyone didn't play the originals.
Incidentally I've been finding much more enjoyment in indie games the past few years, because these tend to be made by people who aren't doing so to become rich(though I suppose they wouldn't mind that happening along the way).
I agree. One I enjoyed recently was Paratopic[0].
One of the reasons I was excited for VR is because I was hoping it would turn into the wild west again like it was back in the NES/SNES days where people where experimenting. You'd play a game where some stuff worked and some stuff didn't, but you appreciated the entertainment regardless.
Nowadays it's all so engineered and samey that I often find it more difficult to finish AAA games than indie games.
I liken AAA games to porn.They put a little bit of everything in there to try and appeal to as wide an audience as they can.
Back in the day, exploring the game itself and its systems used to be part of the appeal. Nowadays developers are scared to death that a player might make a decision that locks them out of content.
If that's your criteria, then I really think the last 10-15 years of gaming has seen more of that than the earlier decades. Minecraft, Kerball Space Program, Factorio, Subnautica, Stardew Valley and many more have become mega-hits even if they didn't originate in the mainstream. Their influence on the mainstream games (Fortnite) is undeniable and has forced gaming in better directions, particular towards exploration and creativity. I was a kid in 2000 as well and if you had shown me Minecraft then, I would have been head-over-heels. Sure, there's still on-rails shooters if you want them and a lot of games are "open world" ala Far Cry 3's map-of-checkboxes-to-tick and not "open world" ala Minecraft. But gaming as a whole gives way more options (even just among best-sellers) for creativity, expression, and exploration than ever before. We're in a golden age for the medium right now and if I could experience that through the same eyes I had growing up, I'd be awed.
I'll agree with other commenters pointing out the wealth of amazing games that fit neither category you describe. Hollow Knight, for example, feels like a small team just went bananas offering a ridiculous amount of high quality content for a low price. I could name a whole bunch more that others haven't already. They're far from 'glorified demos that use technical limitations to their advantage'. Hollow Knight has been considered perhaps the best 'Metroidvania' by critics and fans alike.
Even a game like Celeste, which perhaps gets closer to being 'technically limited' and literally came from a demo game jam, is one of the best platformers I've played in my life.
The way I see it, your argument has some degree of merit insofar that the 'mainstream' of gaming got a ton bigger, more global, and more lucrative. This also happened to film and music.
But it's needlessly pessimistic to conclude that as a result there's less quality.
I'm a very picky gamer and since I don't make some artificial distinction between triple-A games and 'indie games', I could spend a hefty chunk of money on a monthly basis buying only the games I consider truly amazing. This has not been the case historically, at least in my experience.
I highly doubt it.
the witcher 2, GTA5, factorio, DOTA2, Rust. I would have dreamed to play anoy of those. You can even watch DOTA2 like its a football game with pro commentators and incredible money on the line.
Your critique of some of these bigger titles and studios is not wrong, but you are generalizing it into a farce of the modern gaming world.
Did you consider perhaps you changed, and don't have the same wonder and ability to immerse yourself in games as you did 20 years ago.
I agree with the sentiment that video games back in the day were more elaborate in other ways that matter more than what is done today. Several good or promising franchises have also been totally ruined by becoming big.
As soon as it's making large amounts of money, it garners attention from the kind of people who don't really care about anything but making money. DLCs and all the other bad shit is because the people in power aren't the ones that are passionate about making great things.
Gameplay, creative backstory, unique multiplayer + PVP, and countless other aspects place Dark Souls at the top of the list for me, and that’s not limited to Ps4 but all platforms.
Then again, speedcubing (Rubik's cube) is my "main" hobby, and it's a lot deeper and more interesting IMO.
I don't know, if you include Magic the Gathering in the card games pile it's definitely competitive on the "richness"[0] spectrum against most video games.
Though in the current apocalypse, there's been an uptick in video game forms of Magic, and even a sharp rise in people playing over the internet by pointing a webcam at their table.
[0]: Pun not intended, but it's undeniably also expensive...
Which is why I think lumping all video games into a single category is meaningless. Beat Saber and Minecraft have little in common.
They're both high profile VR games.
Beat Sabor is one of the first "killer app" VR games, with a clear goal with emphasis on reaction time and immersion using the VR tech behind it.
Both are played very differently, the former a game you come back to to refine your work over and over in a creative way, the other using reaction time to score better.
Missing the point, or making a joke?
Having never heard of Beat Sabor, this made me think it sounds like Guitar Hero. YouTube confirms. I really did not ever get the appeal of GH, but BS looks pretty fun.
This segment is incredibly lucrative for the winners. Niantic has an estimated revenue of 800 million dollars. Supercell's highest reported revenue was just over 2 billion euros. King sold to Activision Blizzard for 5.9 billion dollars in 2016. Epic is going to war with Google and Apple over Fornite money. There's Asian players that are also impressive, but I'm not familiar enough to speak on that market. These revenues and valuations are happening in a high growth market.
https://cdc-tencent-com-1258344706.image.myqcloud.com/upload...
https://sensortower.com/blog/fate-grand-order-revenue-3-bill...
What strikes me most is how compelling this material is to command my attention. It's like being under a spell.
They are great at taking money, but even for f2p they are just psychologically optimized to command our attention (which is a bigger concern in depth and breadth of impact).
Can't wait for the future strategies of addiction we can see in the next gen games :D
I’ve played two gatcha games in succession and this describes the thing very well. I wasn’t missing a single of play, spend a little money on them, read news and game info everyday. I’m glad I stopped. Some PC games can attract my attention for hours or days on, but they are not a daily burden, and also more satisfying to play.
Let's just say that the majority of characters in Fate/Grand Order and other Asian gacha games that one can roll for are young and female for a reason...
At least they aren't firearms or WW2 warships. -shrug-
Not all of them are for waifu reasons, the game I played was Summoner's War that was PvP oriented but it's all pay2win so there's no point.
https://www.pocketgamer.biz/asia/news/68945/summoners-war-dr...
I played for over a year, the money part wasn't the worst -- the actual time commitment to some of these games is insane.
Even if they have autoplay function, they are psychological attention traps.
It's an affront to what makes gaming fun. They are "games" in the same sense that slot machines are "games". They aren't games in the sense that non-mobile gamers talk about.
Overnight play? Checked.
Addicted? Checked.
Sleep deprived? Checked.
Physical pain from holding the phone and looking at a small screen? Checked.
Raging behavior? Mood is definitively effected, especially when the social aspect has a negative turn.
Also, overall, steam sales seems to cost way more money I have ever seen being spent on games. And not just that, spending a lot of money on steam sales is point of pride for gamers - who ten turn around and act all superior over causual player ... spending less money (or no money) overall.
> Raging behavior? Mood is definitively effected, especially when the social aspect has a negative turn.
Rage and affected mood are two different things. But again, the level of anger or irritability in relation with farmville are super mild compared to what I have seen in pc/console gamers.
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The most irritable to me is the level of hypocrisy pc/console gamers display when they complain about causual games.
If we are talking about spending, thankfully the above person did at least restrict themselves to <$100 per months on boosters (or at least that what they told me), but you should be aware that in-store revenue outnumber sales revenue in basically ever game regardless if its on phone or pc (not sure about console but my guess is that the same is true). There is a reason why almost every game company has shifted focus away from game sales and into in-game item sales.
> Rage and affected mood are two different things.
No. Mood swings because of a game is the same regardless if its short bursts or long and moody. If a person allow a game (and the social groups in it) to have lasting negative effect on their mood then that is a problem regardless what kind of game it is.
The people I had observed having issues basically played to the point of failing school classes due to chronic sleep deprivation, had atrocious performance in work post gaming session (he talked about playi by game till morning openly) or basically checked out of family life entirely making partner basically single. Let's say that formely gaming friendly wife build up huge aversion toward games.
I knew multiple of these and none of them played farmvile nor anything like that.
I believe people like your friend exist, the farmville top cant be composed of people having healthy relationships and jobs. But they are not around me. Around me the worst were among pc/console players, usually people who self identified as gamers and took it as point of pride.
To note, pachinko are a widely installed business in their country.
Same as medal games in game centers, there has always been a need for super simple, mindless “games”, with or without money exchanging hand at some point.
Say what you will about Fortnite, but it's definitely not an "ad riddled garbage fire". They do advertise their store offerings in the lobby, albeit in a pretty unobtrusive way. The game has essentially become a PvP Grand Theft Auto, and it's executed remarkably well. On top of that, it's free to play and has absolutely no play-to-win mechanics. All purchases are purely cosmetic.
It might not be your bag, but I find this characterization of at least one game developed by a studio mentioned above to be completely inaccurate.
When you launch the game you get full screen ads for newly released skins you have to click past to acknowledge, entire seasons are designed and themed around marketing deals with cinematics of the new stuff and click through walkthroughs about season skins you can by. If you don't have the battle pass there is constant advertising to get it and when you do it provides enough free virtual currency to run you through the virtual store at least a couple times per year so buying the cosmetics feels familiar.
So you have heavy 3rd party ads (as mentioned next season is going to be all Marvel) and heavy first part ads (in game store purchases) every time you launch the game, join a match, participate in a match, finish a match, or leave a party. Just because the ads are integrated doesn't mean it's not an ad riddled garbage fire.
But overall it's a decent enough game that lets me interact with some folks who otherwise wouldn't play something so I like it. I'm just aware I'm being served ads constantly in it.
And to be fair, most "actual" games are pretty crap too.
Pretty much every product sold in our society has its' design shaped by the need to make money (i.e capitalism).
I'm not sure why you're singling out F2P games here specifically, relative to all the other half-baked crap designed to make a profit.
At least hundreds of millions of people daily get value out of playing free games without spending a cent. Consider the fact that all console/PC gamers have spent money on the game up-front, whereas a very small proportion of people on mobile pay for all of the rest.
Like, I don't enjoy games with micro-transactions, but clearly lots of other people do. Who am I to judge their fun?
Mindlessly grind medallions or whatever. The problem with IAP games (free or not, afaik a Dead Space game was selling ingame crafting materials as IAPs) is they waste your most precious resource: time.
> And trailers and reviews were famously broken for console/PC games historically.
Oh but that's easy. Don't preorder and don't buy games based on just one review. Especially don't buy games based on the developer's trailers :)
Like, I mostly agree with you on the quality of many (maybe most) F2P games, but FIFA wastes your time far more than Candy Crush (and indeed, the people who buy sports games every year seem very strange to me).
Us HNers are a dying breed, a lot of people don't have computers any more, or when they have them they use them only when absolutely necessary.
Wasting time is sort of the point.
And there's wasting time going through varied content, and there's wasting time doing the same thing for days.
They could have lowered the App's section to 15% or 10% cut without unrecoverable damage to their services revenue stream.
I would guess that number correlates to “90% of people under a certain age (50??) who have access to a device”.
That 1.5 billion play games on PC is shocking to me.
This. Local multiplayer has been severely lacking from games since networking got really fast. Most people of my generation who grew up playing things like GoldenEye and Halo locally would buy anything that gave even minimal service to this niche.
My buddy and I stayed up til 2am the other week co-opping "Wild Guns" on his Super NT. Totally out of left field and something I never would have cared for when I had an SNES.
That said, I also wish newer games embraced it more, but at least I found some outlet.
Half the stuff I see people do online goes against any logic I ever thought people would do. I wouldn't be surprised if it takes off for something completely out of left field. Like what is the weirdest, dumbest thing you could think of doing with vr technology, for example - watching 2d movies with your friends, or playing minesweeper, and I bet that's going to be the thing that makes it hit big.
Eh, I'd be cautious. Remember the late 90s, when the day when you'd primarily control your computer by talking to it was imminent? Or (also in the late 90s) when PDAs were going to take over the world? Or that thing where you'd have documents embedded in other documents and no applications as such? Or... tech has a lot of fads, is all I'm saying, and often significant resources are spent on them. Some of them go somewhere. Some eventually emerge in a massively different form (PDA -> smartphone). Some just die, though.
Except that this belies the politics of BigCos. The BigCos are throwing money at it because a) everybody else is doing it, and nobody wants to get left behind, so it's a good bet for executives to fund b) it's a shiny new thing, so it's an interesting project that will get adoption internally from people at the lower levels who will be eager to transfer to and work on the project.
Neither of those have anything to do with whether or not there's actually a sizable market for it, but we won't know whether a market will appear for it as the market potential is nearly entirely dependent upon execution (i.e. early VR didn't sell well due to low resolution, motion sickness from low refresh rates, lack of a killer app, etc.).
It's pretty easy to throw money at projects. Coming up with something that's good enough to sell at mass-market volumes is an entirely different question.
Production value or number of games? I still see lots of games being made. But there most stuff to wade through to find a good one.
I have been dreaming of better interfaces (controllers) for games for decades. The Wii, despite it's limited power, was a huge leap forward in how we played games. Unfortunately Nintendo is the only gaming company taking risks while Microsoft and Sony keep doubling down on graphics with the same controllers from 30 years ago. If someone made a non-VR console with VR-style controllers it would be a huge leap. Instead we keep getting the same old immersion-killing 4-button-mashing consoles and games with upgraded graphics cards.
Of course if this is a solvable problem - those who otherwise suffer from motion sickness are symptom-free in any VR application - then I agree VR could have a bright future.
I'm getting into boat-sailing, and I'm saddened by the nausea it causes. I'm looking into ways to reduce this, and I'm thinking ways to deal with motion sickness incurred in VR-games is probably applicable to me.
After trying the oculus dk1 roller coaster demo, I was incapable of doing anything for 4-5 hours and still felt sick days later.
I play beat saber regularly; taking off the vive after an hour I feel mildly disoriented for about half a minute and then I am fine. The tech has progressed tremendously and no longer gives me any trouble (which may not hold true for everyone but it’s definitely been fine for me)!
Sony did with PS Move, many years before PSVR. I guess you could consider the Wii a prototype in that direction as well.
Because they work and they're what people want. Xbox and Playstation both tried their own motion controls and they flopped, and thank god they did. Many of us like controllers and don't want people trying to innovate that away.
Like with social media, the psychological implications are not clear.
I am very into Starcraft myself. It is a wonderful combination of speed, strategy, economics, deception, and accuracy.
It's super fun and engrossing, but I have to admit I occasionally get flashes of worry about is this how I want to spend my time? To be fair, I get the same thoughts about my job.
What is interesting is that an affirmative to this question often makes life more “game-like” and in terms more open to the notion of it capable of being “fun to play” (and vice versa). Though once again not many people would wholeheartedly appreciate this Insight. Very unfortunately life is often filled with suffering and miseries and most (including myself) would often get blinded and overlook the nice things, as well as its game-like nature.
Perhaps getting into one of these man-made simulators is not that bad of a thing, especially if it engages the social module and in some way enriches the overall gameplay of life.
I think many progresses in science & technologies are often hindered by our tendencies to not appreciate games. As a (post)modern civilisation we often take things too seriously. Probably a feature not a bug! But on a more individual level I think taking things more lightly (while still being a responsible human being) would improve the overall quality of life. That is something I’m still trying to learn.
I am trying to be less serious as well. It's easy to fall into the trap of be highly critical, highly methodical and just overall taking everything at serious face value, but where is the joy in that?
some background:
I'm 45, I don't think I can handle anything too intense (even watching TV gets my heart pounding, I get too immersed and don't exactly enjoy too much adrenaline); I used to enjoy the Atari console in the 80s and then later played games on my Apple IIc and then PC, up to around year 2000 or so. Now I own an iPhone SE and Macbook air 2015, so nothing too powerful. I don't have a TV (but a decent computer screen).
EDIT: so many great suggestions for things I didn't know existed. Thank you so much!
Personal favorites: FTL: Faster Than Light. Not turn-based, so can get a little heated every now and then but generally pretty calm ime. https://store.steampowered.com/app/212680/FTL_Faster_Than_Li...
The Civilization series is all turn based and as long as you play against the computer you get to take as long as you like for each turn. https://store.steampowered.com/app/289070/Sid_Meiers_Civiliz...
Cities: Skylines! Love trying my hand at infrastructure design. https://store.steampowered.com/app/255710
Prison Architect https://store.steampowered.com/app/233450
I've heard good things about Factorio. If you want to dip your toes into first person games you should try the Portal series, which has a bit more action but not too much imo.
These all will work fine on your Macbook Air!
Stardew Valley should be the alternative.
Oh yes, what a game!! Love it!
I want also to recommend Broken Sword 1 2 and 5
And "The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief" And most of the Goldbox Games,
and my Favorite:
The Longest Journey with ResidualVM and the HD patches.
Civilization 6 is a turn based, hexagon grid, strategy game where you build an empire from the ancient era, researching pottery and animal husbandry, an so on, all the way to the future with satellites and rockets and war robots.
It's all turn based, so it's not particularly intense, however it can be infuriating (usually in a good way) when another civ nukes you because you wouldn't trade with them.
Cities Skylines a city builder. (The most famous game in this genre would be SimCity which is also great fun but can feel quite dated nowadays.) You can either play it traditionally, managing your city budget, revenue, taxes, milestones as your small town grows into a metropolis. Or you can play in a sandbox mode where money and all supplies are infinite and you're mostly dealing with infrastructure and zoning.
Note, while they both run well on a Mac, Cities Skylines can get very laggy when your city reaches the hundreds of thousands of citizens.
I can also second the suggestion for chess, or maybe digital versions of other board games.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ez34jp/the-modders-who-de...
https://civ-5-cbp.fandom.com/wiki/Civ5_CBP_Wikia
Civ 6 is just so bad in comparison.
Some things are up to personal taste, like the graphics and art style. I definitely prefer how Civ 5 looks.
There's also the fact that Civ 5 was primarily designed and developed as a desktop PC game, while Civ 6 was designed as cross-platform (desktop, tablets, consoles, and smartphones). Some people will prefer that too, though.
But there are major differences that aren't up for discussion:
Civ5 has better mods because Firaxis exposed/released APIs that give modders more control/access than Civ6 provides. This means more & better mods.
VP has better AI than Civ 6. I think it has some of the best AI in the history of gaming.
VP has better balancing, for both civs/leaders and tech/social.
VP has an active developer who releases frequently and listens to community feedback. More importantly, VP's developer primarily cares about making the game fun. Firaxis primarily cares about squeezing money out of customers through expansions and DLC.
I really regret buying Civ6. I even got suckered twice with the expansions, thinking they would at least lead to modders bringing the game up to par. Nope.
I have 1000 hours in Civ 5 (mostly Vox Populi), and ~100 in Civ 6. Those hours in Civ6 have been in 5-hour bouts of me trying to enjoy the game, then giving up because it feels so bad to play.
I wish Firaxis would just hire the guy behind VP and put him in charge of the series.
It seems like, 10-20 years ago I could reliably look forward to the next installment to the franchise to give me more of what I want, or at least be decent. Lately I realized how almost the opposite is true, that the longer a game series goes on the less innovative it is, the more bloated, less joyful.
I'm not a fan of mobile games in general but Apple Arcade games have no micro-transactions as a rule and they curated by Apple, which means they are generally very polished.
I can recommend Grindstone in particular, but with the service being like Netflix, you can try just about every game; I'm sure some things will catch your eye.
For your Mac and given your preferences I can recommend Sim City 4, and indie classics like Bastion, Braid and Fez; the latter two will probably challenge your preconceptions about video games.
It is a beautiful, calm, amazing game. It has not text but you can feel the sadness (and happiness) of the game through the visuals and music.
I usually don't like platformers/puzzle games, but I think I finished it in 1-2 sittings
3 billion people is 30% or of 3 people. Ok, we go on OkCupid, we find the question "Do you enjoy playing video games" and we set that as a criteria for matches. Your matches will drop to > 1% of the population, at least as a male looking for female.
Checking another dating site that has things people like. The site claims 10 million users, only 200k have selected "like games" or 2%, vastly different than the article's claimed 30%
I get some of the reasons for the difference like not considering yourself a gamer yet plays Covet Fashion an hour a day.
Still, in daily life the number of people I meet who would claim to like games in any form doesn't match that 30% number.
Virtually everyone you know probably tried Candy Crush, Pokemon Go, or flappy bird. Most of them probably have at least one game like that installed on their phone today that they play on the toilet or whatever. But they don't consider themselves gamers.
To most people the term gamer does not precisely mean "one who plays games." The type of games and immersion in gaming culture are factors that people consider when labeling themselves and others "gamers."
Like she wouldn't buy a "gaming chair" or any other gamer-branded/oriented merch nor are the games something she talks about much.
For now, e-sports is at that sweet spot of good production value and a reasonable amount of advertising. I predict we'll be back to sitting through 3-5 minutes of commercials for every 15 minutes of gameplay within the next decade as advertisers realize how willing gamers are to spend money on virtual stuff.
Then Halo came out in November, and in the spring semester, when everyone returned to school after the holidays, and a lot of people had new XBoxes with Halo, nobody thought it was weird anymore. Almost overnight, online video games became normalized, at least to college age dudes.
This is apparent especially in dating circles, where more often than not, listing video games as hobby for a males is a negative signal to the opposite sex.
Being a “TV watcher” as in spending several hours a day doing it as your main hobby is not any better than being a “gamer” for dating purposes.
I never seen office and it never mattered. Majority of people I know never seen Game of Thrones and would not liked it. Some people do like Game of thrones. So no, it is definitely not a requirement by "society". It may be requirement in your own bubble of society, just as some other bubbles treat dota or Witcher III as requirement.
I also cant recall people defending TV watching as not-a-wasted-of-time. There seems to be consensus that it is waste of time. That if you spent whole weekend by watching tv or watched tv till late hours, you should get a grip and self control.
FF VII teaches you real values. LoL teaches you absolutely nothing besides resilience when getting bashed for going 0/1
Maybe those girls make own observations on the behavioral difference between a guy who takes gaming as an identity and lists it as important vs guy who sometimes plays games.
People look for matches.
This is almost certainly because of the small portion of men who see "video games" as a personality rather than a hobby and are probably quite strongly responsible for society's view on "gamers" too.
One loud and toxic apple spoils the batch etc
(Unless you have a realistic plan to change it.)
I have nothing against games, it's no better or worse than any other hobby or time-killing activity. It's just stunning that so many people are so busy and yet have so much free time.
If you aren't obsessing and are otherwise stable (no debt, bills are paid, job, housing), then it doesn't matter what others say about them. We could be doing something more productive than arguing on HackerNews, yet here we are. Life isn't about being productive 100% of our lives since nothing really does matter anyway.
In a thousand, million or billion years, most (if not all of us) will be forgotten.
Sign up to a MOOC, geez.
Imagine a woman who plays mobile games just to kill time at the bus stop, etc. Exec told me that she had friends like this and she has really easily gotten them to adopt all sorts of gaming and knew how easy it was to do this.
So when they looked at it like that, the market for people who were ignored was massive and that's one of the reasons why they grew so fast.
I think another underserved video game niche is our elderly... but maybe that's a separate discussion
Really brought it home to me that so much bias is reproduced through the biases of advertisers, rather than the platforms.
If a game is going to support Windows + macOS than it isn't much more work to also support Linux these days. There are many games released on Linux every year.
I don't tend to play the large AAA type games though, I don't know how well those work if that's your thing, but I find them to usually be more style than substance anyway.
A new Netflix special on games 'High Score' touches on the gender issues and how some games for whatever reason have entirely different demographic appeal: Pac Man and Tetris were (still in the later case) disproportionately popular among women.
The medium obviously allows for much more, but we can't ignore the social parallels.
Why is there an "although" at the beginning of that sentence? Why wouldn't they be generating the highest revenue person?
This was true even before Steam sales and Humble Bundle and free games on the Epic Store and and and...
Ironically, YouTube is probably the best archive of video games that we have.
Are there any fun games?
Back in the day when shareware was a thing it was much more prevalent with game demos, but that was also before game consoles really took over. Then physical stores made a difference, where you could go and try out a game before purchase, but of course those aren't really much of a thing anymore.
My conclusion of the research then was that most games are simply not built with a demo in mind. It's more common these days for games to front load the introduction part of the game, often a tutorial, so that you can start playing before the game is fully downloaded, but back then it wasn't very common. This could work as a stand-alone demo and I know a few games that does this – Tomb Raider for example – from which you could then unlock the full game and download the rest. But it was (and might still be) an exception to the norm.
My opinion is that online stores can and should put pressure on game devs (and engine makers in particular) to enable customers to play a demo of a game before committing to a purchase. It might not work for all kinds of games (particularly ones without single player elements) but I reckon it ought to work for a majority of them.
I know it's not a good old demo.
It is about as innocent of an addiction as you can have and is likely better than tv or alcohol, which are the other go-to options for making the time go by. Remember, when USA tried a prohibition on alcohol, it did not go over well. People have a strong need to make the time go by and unwind - video games are likely the least destructive form of doing so.
Some part of me really wishes that "gambling" in games would finally get cracked down on to level the playing field for the rest of us.
I now have a 5 month old son and that has really amplified my thinking of the future. I will of course educate my children on the dangers of addictive games, etc. but what about others? It's sad, but also classic "think of the children!"
I'd guess playing a cutting edge PC game at reasonable spec puts you into the top 1% income wise? (gut feel guess)
So 3 billion is presumably anything that has a screen and a game?
Games are big but near half of humanity is a pretty bold claim.
“Casual” video gaming, a term that carries unfortunate dismissive undertones, represents the most common form of video games played. The proliferation of the smart phone has undoubtedly helped here.
Probably more so pre-pandemic. My observation when I lived in Chicago is that many people played these games while commuting via mass transit, I’m sure fewer are doing that now.
Do see a bit of sudoku. It would be interesting if there are music vs audiobooks metrics on today’s commuters. I get the commute escapism of candy crush but I’ve seen enough of that in homes/work to wonder.
A similar situation:
If I was discussing "board game culture" I think that most people would recognize that I'm referring the culture associated with games like Catan or Pandemic as opposed to people casually playing Tic Tac Toe.
No-one's talking about 'board game culture', though. This is about whether people play video games. If you were talking about the board games people play, Catan would be a barely visible blip; it'd be all about things like Monopoly. Now if you were talking about people who consider playing games part of their identity, I'd be inclined to agree (though there are edge cases; Pokemon Go falls into both 'casual game' and 'game that people get a bit weird about', for instance), but that's not at all what this survey is about.
EDIT: Also, well, media evolves. If you look at the sort of TV that's popular now, a lot of it is dramatically different to how it was in, say, the 80s and 90s. Someone who'd been in a coma since before Seinfeld came out would find modern sitcoms (with their lack of laugh tracks), and high production value dramas with multi-season story arcs (barely existed until this century), and reality shows, extremely weird. But they'd recognise that it was TV. And some 80s-style content still exists; it's just largely not what is popular right now.
From a business perspective, they are unlikely to be the same target market. Gaming related memes and similar cultural artifacts are unlikely to be shared. Etc.
This argument seems popular with people who like Very Serious Video Games, and are affronted by being associated with filthy casuals (the gamers, not the brand).
Similarly "all people eat food" isn't really helpful if you're wondering how large the market for artificial meat is.
If you wish to separate “core” gamers, do it by device or by category, since that is much clearer and carries less of a value judgement.
For example I played Love Letter on Board Game Arena on Tuesday. Clearly if I played the "real" Love Letter that isn't a video game, it's a card game. So maybe playing it on BGA is still a card game, except the cards don't exist and I'm on a web site?
Sometimes on Tuesday I play Through The Ages. TTA was created as a board game, but obviously in the pandemic you can't safely go to somebody's house and sit around playing board games for hours. So there's a version that's a Steam game. Is that a video game? Or is that still just a board game I'm playing via Steam?
Sometimes we play D&D online instead. Is that a video game? Is it a video game if we're doing a 4th edition combat encounter, so that exact positions and movement matter? How about if it's a roleplayed skill check scenario instead?
Is an Infocom text adventure game a video game? How about a point-and-click like Monkey Island?
Is designing courses in Mario Maker 2 a video game?
Is writing Python code for my Compact Claustrophobia (Minecraft modpack) robot to more efficiently construct things for my play a video game?
These are things that require some clear fundamental idea of what video games are to guide principled decisions. Whereas Candy Crush is just obviously a video game.
If Candy Crush isn't a video game then I'm pretty sure arcade Space Invaders wasn't a video game either.
If the same number was cited for beer drinking, I’d be saying “sure, if you count anyone who’s ever had a Budweiser”, and it would be a valid criticism.
Though with videogames, it's still a meaningful statistic to include "casuals" considering it used to be taboo to play videogames at all as an adult.
There's a difference between a casual Candy Crush player and a casual Overwatch player though.
I wouldn't class the Candy Crush player as even a casual gamer.
"Over three billion people are now drinkers"
"If you count having a glass of wine once a week then sure"
On the subway, it's not uncommon to see people playing games like candy crush on their commute to and from work. The average subway commute is an hour long each way. Playing two hours a day is a decent chunk of time. Engaging in any other hobby for even 30 minutes a day would put you squarely in at least the "enthusiast" category by most definitions.
Even excluding commutes, it's quite common for me to see people playing mobile games during e.g. their lunch break.
So, I think a better analogy would be more like:
"Over three billion people are now drinkers"
> "If you count drinking a budweiser every day then sure"
Which, yeah, I would.
It may have to do with the difference in "I will play this game instead of staring into the void" vs "I will buy that game and set aside time to play it". Would people on the subway play candy crush if they didn't have to commute? There's a fine line, I believe.
And then there's another fine line with regards to what counts as "video game". Is computer chess a video game because it's played on a computer, or is it simply chess? How many people would say "I'm going to play on the computer" vs "I'm going to play some chess" when they're going to play chess on their computer? "Video games" aren't the same as "mobile games" in my opinion, though there are video games on mobile devices, but e.g. Solitaire isn't a video game.
And last but not least: I'm pretty sure most people who play Minesweeper on their commute but aren't otherwise into computer games would self-identify as "gamers".
That seems like a weird distinction to draw, given the numerous other activities you could be doing with that time (reading a book, for example). Clearly, they downloaded candy crush with the intention of playing it. The time they set aside is their commute.
If I purchase a Switch solely to play e.g. Octopath on the subway, am I no longer a "gamer" simply because I'm just using it as an alternative to staring out into the void?
FWIW: IIRC Candy Crush's most popular "day of the week" is Sunday, meaning people ARE setting aside time to play.
> And then there's another fine line with regards to what counts as "video game". Is computer chess a video game because it's played on a computer, or is it simply chess?
Yes, that's true. I think that leads to interesting questions about what qualifies as a video game. Do all the e.g. sim games (bus sim, flight sim, etc.) count as video games? What about Madden/etc?
However, I don't think any of that's relevant here: There's no real-world counterpart to Candy Crush.
> "Video games" aren't the same as "mobile games" in my opinion, though there are video games on mobile devices, but e.g. Solitaire isn't a video game.
I think that's a pretty reductionist view of mobile games, especially given the roots of video games. Candy Crush isn't any more simplistic than say, Ice Climber or Tetris (or substitute that with most other early NES-era games).
I don't think you want to put arbitrary complexity requirements on games to be considered "true games", otherwise we'll have to re-evaluate a lot of titles: E.g. are Telltale games "video games", or are they just choose-your-own-adventures on a computer? What about Tetris?
And that's to say nothing of the other point you mentioned, which is that increasingly "modern" games are available on mobile devices. One of the top sellers on the iOS app store is Minecraft, which I think everyone would consider qualifies as a video game. Epic is currently going through a massive battle with Apple over them kicking Fortnite off the app store.
> And last but not least: I'm pretty sure most people who play Minesweeper on their commute but aren't otherwise into computer games would self-identify as "gamers".
I will posit that is largely because of the stigma around being a "gamer", partially warranted (gaming communities can be notoriously toxic) and partially not.
This is somewhat self-reinforcing because many adults who should identify as "gamers" don't want to be associated with that term (I count myself in that group, which is partially why I'm so passionate about this topic). Viewpoints like "mobile games don't count as real games" don't help either, by excluding everyone but the most diehard.
Again, I think with any other hobby it would be hard for you not to qualify as at least an enthusiast if you spent an appreciable amount of time engaging in it. If I read novels for 2 hours a day, it would be quite appropriate for someone to label me as a "reader".
I believe it's similar to the difference between running because you're late and need to catch the bus and going for a run because you want to run. One is the end ("I want to play a game"), the other is a means ("I want to kill time on the train and a book is too complicated").
Tetris isn't a video game in my opinion, but it's a computer game. A video game involves video of some kind of world to move in, be that a football field you're running on, a race track you drive on, or a wasteland you crawl through. Maybe you could make the immersion a distinction, but I'm not sure about it.
> I will posit that is largely because of the stigma around being a "gamer", partially warranted (gaming communities can be notoriously toxic) and partially not.
I don't know. I've never been part of any gaming communities, but there has been a time when I played a lot of games and if asked, I would've said that I'm a gamer. I haven't for years, so I don't consider myself a gamer now.
> Again, I think with any other hobby it would be hard for you not to qualify as at least an enthusiast if you spent an appreciable amount of time engaging in it.
I'm not sure. I've watched a lot of movies but I'd never consider myself a movie buff, I just liked cheap entertainment. I believe it's different with books because there has to be intention, reading isn't the path of least resistance, it requires more intention than candy crush, movies, meme scrolling or listening to music or a pod cast.
Similarly, driving a car to work (or using public transportation) isn't really saying anything about you. Biking to work all year, no matter the weather, is different.
I don't think it's about "gate keeping" as much as wanting clear communication. It's not useful to call everyone a gamer that has ever in their life played a game on an electronic device. It's not useful to call everyone a climber that has ever in their life climbed something, be that a mountain, tree or bunk bed.
And my general opinion: don't worry about identifying yourself as a gamer because of some stigma. People who are worth talking to will usually ask and find out what you're talking about. It may be a good litmus test to quickly sort out those that live by factory made opinions. Don't bother trying to be liked by them.
If you chose to bike to work every day, I would call you a biker. If you watched a movie every single day, I would say watching movies is a hobby of yours. If you went to a rock climbing gym every day, I would call you a climber.
Driving, and some other fields like cooking, are quite different. You're not choosing to engage in that behavior - it's a requirement for your life. Same with cooking food. You need to get to work, you need to eat. You don't need to play Candy Crush on the train - and obviously, many people don't.
> And my general opinion: don't worry about identifying yourself as a gamer because of some stigma.
I don't mean to be a negative ned, but I'm not talking about the "neckbeard loser" stigma. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, that's probably for the best.
Video games have been a large part of my life since I could hold a controller. The sooner I can mention the game I played last night in casual conversation without people assuming I'm a controller-throwing, gamerword-spewing child with no impulse control or social intuition, the better.
The last time I mentioned I played Dark Souls the conversation turned to how horrible the community is, with the implication that I spend my time telling people to "git gud" and invading new players to make them miserable. Never mind that I helped probably 10-12 people beat Capra Demon that night with no ingame reward past "humanity" which I already have more than I need.
"There are 3 billion Spanish speakers worldwide"
But then you learned that only 500 million were really fluent, and the rest ranged from broken Spanish that was enough to get by in a Spanish speaking country to people who were forced to take a Spanish class in highschool and never used it again.
I think this concept of "fluency" in games is probably a more useful metric. The question is, if I dump you in front of a game that you've never played before, but it conforms to the language of video game design, how quickly can you beat it? I would imagine that someone who only played Candy Crush would not understand how to move their camera around in a 3D environment, for example.[1]
You could extend the metaphor further, for example Spanish is spoken in many different ways around the globe, and therefore some people who speak one dialect of Spanish can't understand another dialect of Spanish. The same could be true for games, and we would need to classify and understand these dialects.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax7f3JZJHSw Interesting video talking about what games are like for a non-gamer, shows an example of not understanding how to move the camera and the player at the same time.
Now would someone who only played NES games, or Civilization VI, or Papers Please. Are we defining 'games' as meaning '3D walk-y about-y games', here?
IMO one of the worst aspects of modern "gamer" culture is this insistence on purity tests particularly when they're aimed at games that are extremely popular with women.
Even in terms of market segmentation I don't think the distinction of "overall gaming fluency" is very measurable or meaningful.
You can't have the same conversation between someone who plays only candy crush, and someone who plays a wide variety of games. Its like saying that 8 billion people read books -- but 7.9 billion of that only read harry potter. Suddenly that 8 billion readers is far less notable.
There's a scale to your level of hobbyism -- a lot of people only play games as long as their friends do, because its simply a social tool (replacing the mall). The current flavor just happens to fall under video games, but theres no stickiness -- if the next popular thing is laser tag, they'll shift out and never think about games again.
The notion of trying to define this scale as a problem is also largely unique to gaming -- it exists elsewhere without issue. Painting, movies, programming, literature, music, engineering etc there's no issue saying that someone is dipping their toes into the subject, or has purely commercial interest in it (eg I only watch best selling movies, or only marvel) or has an actual interest in it (a -phile, a hacker, etc)
I think the key difference is the prevailing belief that there is no depth to this subject, so the only difference between a casual entrant and a hobbyist and a professional is an arbitrary checklist.
Obviously I disagree -- there is depth, and therefore, there is a difference between "gamers", as they fall between the ranks in understanding that depth. Ofc theres no great metric, and you can't define it in detail, but the difference between a candy-crush-only "gamer" and a genre-agnostic "gamer" and a genre-loving "gamer" and a read-the-literature (what little exists) "gamer" in recognizing and communicating about that depth is readily apparent
The problem mostly comes from people who define their hobby as their life. I play games a lot and make them professionally but wouldn’t call myself a gamer. I don’t see my wife playing Match-3 games on her phone as lesser than my wife playing Baldurs Gate. Likewise I can enjoy Sage Solitaire and Escape from Tarkov.
Gaming is mainstream now and people who feel threatened by that need to grow up.
It would be the difference of trying to communicate about movies between someone who has only ever seen marvel films, and someone who watched say the entirety of the criterion collection. Or the difference between technical sales and engineers. It'd be fairly meaningless to give them the same label -- one is clearly capable of a more advanced communication on the subject than the other, if only because they've experience a larger subset of the subject.
Of course, you could also play the living hell out of a single game and be extremely fluent about only that one game -- which is clearly different than someone being fluent about games in general. We wouldn't expect someone who only ever played SC2, even if he had put 2000 hours into it, to have anything notable to say about FPS games and RPGs.
As you've opined, the marker of when you'd be considered a "gamer" vs otherwise is an arbitrary meaningless distinction, a random line drawn in the sand, but that's why "fluency" is trying to be introduced as an alternative.
Also mobile games have deservedly earned a reputation as blatant dopamine pumps and many don't deserve to be considered 'real video games' any more than Facebook or Instagram.
It's like measuring how many people know how to cook and then including people who do microwave dinners. It's technically not incorrect and there's nothing wrong with the people who microwave, it's just not a very useful piece of data.
I know several people that would say exactly that. There are a lot of beer snobs in this world. If it's not Belgian/German/homebrew/etc. it's not beer.
Candy Crush and games like it are closer to https://www.kohls.com/product/prd-2796704/trademark-games-el... than https://store.steampowered.com/app/10/CounterStrike/. I wouldn't call the former a video game by any reasonable standard.
I think Candy Crush qualifies as a video game, if only by the most technically narrow of definitions. But it's a pretty hard sell to put the stereotypical Candy Crush style game player in the same category as someone who owns and regularly utilizes a console. There is overlap, obviously, but that's also clearly not what we're discussing.
At some point the casual application of "video gamer" will make the term meaningless--especially as we move toward almost ubiquitous electronic interfaces and devices for even the most mundane of life's activities.
A golfing or racing game isn't similar to golfing or racing, it's clearly primarily a video game. It gets somewhat blurry when you have a high-end setup with a cockpit that's being shaken while you drive a rally. Is it still a video game, or a simulator? I'd say the latter, but it's an edge case.
Angry Birds is, to me at least, closer to a video game (though I'd say it's a different genre "mobile game"), because there's obviously not a directly transferred real-life version.
We do it in many other areas without such issue, e.g., recreational vs. amateur vs. professional athletics, cooking, artistry, etc. If a report were published that said "250 million adult Americans are cooks" I'd find it objectionable. It's not a meaningful number, either in terms of market segmentation or as a description of the actual activity that is purported to be engaged in.
The problem here is that the breakdown is completely arbitrary based on "how much I feel related to people who play it". It is not based on hours played, someone who plays on console less of time can count. It is not by effort spent, someone who plays repetitive grinding games on console still counts. It is not even per who self-identifies as gamer, that is not question in the thread at all. The thread is all about whether candy crush counts as game or videogame.
"250 million adult Americans cook" is perfectly valid thing to write in a report, even of those people don't do special French receipts.
So really, what it is about is that some self-identified gamers take offense on the idea that games which target different demographics can be talked about as a games. And while there are many cultural/emotional things that make it so, it still seem impossible to come up with reasonable definition that excludes candy crush. Candy crush is an insult to most gamers despite majority of them not knowing next thing about that game, except that it was huge success among people they, frankly, find inferior.
Edit; although this study would probably call me one, because I picked up an Xbox controller one time.
I get the negative reactions to this, I really do. All communities - fan clubs, beer aficionados, gamers, book enthusiasts - have groups of gatekeepers that try to separate the dirty filthy unworthy casual people from the real X.
But don't assume that is always the case. Sentiments like this often comes from a different place: wanting meaningful discussion.
There are two parts to this. "X game" vs "Y game" categorization, and "plays games" vs "played a game". The first one is usually contentious so I'll elaborate:
I play Candy Crush and games like it regularly, and enjoy them. However, I call them "casual games" rather than "video games" in the same way people like to separate "board game" from "party game", "jogging" from "running", "visual novel" from "comic book", and "web design" from "programming" (or "sanwdich" from "hotdog"). The borders frequently get blurry, and people love discussing pedantic philosophy about what is a sandwich, but the grouping still exists and is meaningful. While people who don't have a lot of interest in the field find the distinction weird and pointless, the people who are close to the field find the difference to be night and day. I play and enjoy Terraforming Mars which I classify a board game, Dying Light which I classify a video game, and Super Hexagon which I classify a casual game. Conflating the category of any two of them feels equally wrong. They are different activities, played for different reasons, at different times, with different levels of investment.
Any study and discussion that manages to recognize at least these broad distinctions, will be immensely more interesting and fruitful than one who tries to count hotdogs as sandwiches.
Candy Crush has 250-275 million active users. Do some digging if you want an accurate picture. Saying this game or that game counts shows a willful choice to not engage in the conversation, and perhaps a fundamental lack of understanding as to what constitutes a video game.
shrug
I wonder what the public health perception on videogames will be like in 100 years.
Though in 100 years we'll have VR that's as seamless as unlocking your phone. Maybe games will be the healthy jacked guys in school through all the incidental exercise.