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Why Gaming Has Become so Popular

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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.





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