Video Games as Mainstream Lifestyles

[godslabrat]

Disclaimer: I acknowledge that this topic will be colored by my experiences and by the marketing materials I've seen over the years. I further acknowledge that tilt may be notably off from reality.

 

Every time I see a study that shows how "mainstream" the gaming hobby is, I feel a bit perplexed. Not that I disagree that its mainstream, but that there's this implication that it only happened very recently and only because of Sony's marketing. It's as if games weren't palateable to adults, ever.

 

And yet, I remember seeing a lot of magazine articles BITD that showed older people (STARTING with those in their 30s and extending well into senior citizens) who purchased and used an Atari, and later an NES. There were stories about parents who enjoyed the systems with their kids, and even elderly people who kept one in their retirement homes. The implication was that they enjoyed the hobby and understood why kids did as well. At the time, I just assumed there would be a natural transition to games becoming part of every day life... but hey didn't. After the NES faded away, so did these stories, and gaming didn't get a "mainstream" reputation again until the ps2 era. Why?

[Keatah]

I think it's just variances in the efforts put forth by media and advertising. The goal is to create the illusion that something has just reached the lower 1/3rd mark of the upswing on the popularity graph. Enough to be significant, but at the same time provide a lot headroom for future efforts and room for you to grow into whatever it is they're popularizing.

 

Advertising drones will always strive for something like that. But there are, of course, natural variances in the state of things. Economy, technology implementation, shifting demographics, and more.. things which affect how long something stays in vogue.

[HoshiChiri]

Simple answer- PS2 Era was when the kids who grew up on NES got old enough to be the ones writing the articles, and the Atari guys were the ones approving them.

 

It's not too surprising to think the first group to grow up on gaming is the first group to really champion it as adult appropriate.

[fiddlepaddle]

What the heck does "mainstream" really mean, anyway? It's more about acceptance than participation.

 

I'm absolutely positive that MOST people (more than half) do not make a habit of playing video games every day. Kids, maybe (including anybody, I guess, that sill lives with their parents). But anybody with any significant responsibilities and ambitions will generally have more important things to do, most of the time.

 

I consider myself a game fanatic, but it's still a pretty small part of my life, time-wise.

 

I'm sure there are lots of people for whom video games ARE the biggest thing (especially those who are attracted to a forum like this), but as a percentage of the population? Prob not that big a number...

 

But maybe it's "mainstream" because it's a more acceptable way to spend time than it used to be.

 

And if you're talking about marketing materials, it's all about what they want you to think, not reality.

[BassGuitari]

Videogames shouldn't be a lifestyle IMO. You need more balance in your life if everything revolves around video games.

[Keatah]

Videogames shouldn't be a lifestyle IMO.

 

That's absolutely right. Emulation should!

[Tanooki]

Yeah lifestyle should be something used for pleasure, you know that.

 

 

Seriously though, games are a hobby, if you invest a lot into them in time and money that takes away from other stuff, it's time to start re-analyzing reality. As far as the lying myth Sony made it ok for adults to play and that they didn't before is garbage. You can easily go back to anything of the 1980s in gaming and computer magazines and see plenty of adults playing, having fun coding, doing art entertainment, music, and other stuff all in the realm of gaming. You had stuff as crude as the text based Zork adults gobbled up and discussed much like old D&D with dice and paper up into the same with basic low color/rez pictures to moving games and more. Perhaps with Nintendo Power they blurred the lines a little in how they portrayed stuff as they had a hugely popular magazine there, but they were all inclusive and didn't attempt to drive a wedge or alienate a group to suck more people in for cool points.

[Gamemoose]

To paraphrase George Carlin:

 

"To find out how moronic the word 'Lifestyle' is: in a certain point of view, Attila the Hun had an active, outdoor lifestyle...."

[pacman000]

Video games were always for little kids!

 

That's why Pong debuted in a bar...