Why Gaming Has Become so Popular
By
Gaming has become omnipresent. Even
before the world got hit by lockdown after lockdown, gaming was the fastest-growing
entertainment media there was. Add to that millions of people who don’t have
the option to go out and explore the physical world, and you will find a huge
percentage instead take to the digital world. But is that all gaming is?
Escapism? If you game, you know it is so much more than that – so why has this
interactive entertainment medium become so popular?
Compensating for a Slow Initial Growth
Gaming has been around for a long
time (did you know
Nintendo started in the 18th century?),
but until recently, digital gaming was stuck with a stigma that prevented it
from being able to show the masses what it had to offer. It was associated with
people who knew their computers thoroughly, much more so than the average
person. As a result, most people just assumed that gaming would be too complex
or too niche for them to get into and enjoy. There are countless reasons why that
has changed, but it partly comes down to the use of gaming consoles aimed
towards children (like GameBoys) that opened up a new generation to gaming
without the stigma previously given to it.
As a result, while movies, music, and
TV entered a stage of exponential growth during the digital age, gaming took a
while to find itself. It has, however, compensated for that lag period
massively, growing at incredible speeds to become the fastest-growing
entertainment medium out there.
More Affordable Than Before
It is now possible to purchase cheap gaming
laptops that offer a high-quality gaming
experience when they have the right CPU specifications. Where most people would
previously have to buy an expensive games console, now people can game on their
laptop (or even their phone). Don’t forget, too, that games consoles used to be
extremely expensive. If you think the PS5 is pricey, consider that the second
console ever released to the public cost over one thousand dollars
adjusted for inflation. Hacking Our Brains
Facebook came under fire in the Netflix
documentary ‘The Social
Dilemma’for its use and abuse of cognitive
neuroscience. If you haven’t seen the documentary, Facebook and other social
media platforms try to use as many different ways they can to maximize the
dopamine pleasure reward that the brain gets on social media. If you have ever
had your heart flutter at somebody liking your picture, dopamine is why you get
that positive feeling.
Gaming was way on top of that… by
accident. It turns out that the only reason that early games were even fun was
just due to that dopamine response. If you consider that most games are
effectively puzzles and that dopamine gets released when a puzzle gets solved,
you can see how the brain is predisposed to just really love gaming.
The only thing with solving puzzles
is that when you have mastered a certain puzzle, you stop getting that dopamine
response. As a result, you can get bored of the game but still want the
enjoyment from a gaming experience, so you just buy a new game. For this
reason, people buy new games far more frequently than they buy movies or
concert tickets, fuelling the growth of the already mammoth industry.
