What motivates more than half of all Americans over the age of 50 to play so many games on a phone, computer, or console that is connected to a TV?
What is so alluring to us about gaming that it becomes a daily and lifetime activity, even for a 50-year-old who have been playing games in 1980s arcade days?
The simple response is that it serves as a brief respite from the stresses of the outside world. And indeed, a lot of internet games are fantastic diversionary activities: Many Americans spend time each day playing puzzle games on their phones or tablets, such as Sudoku, Candy Crush, Angry Birds, and others.
Over 5 million individuals are playing Fortnite right now. Nearly 240 million individuals played Candy Crush in the previous month. 31 million of us spent $50 or more on a new Animal Crossing game in 2020.
But that’s only a small part of the overall gaming market. After you pass the instantly gratifying phone games, one enters a realm where the player is more than ever involved in a game’s narrative. Instead of passively viewing a movie or TV show, your choices and actions influence the direction the story takes.
A good game enables you to both escape your reality and construct a new one. Your age, height, gender, or physical limitations have no bearing on you. In NBA 2K21, you may face off against Michael Jordan and defeat him even if you can’t make free throws in real life. As they get started, players become more proficient, taking delight in solving a challenging task or moving up to a new challenge level.
For a second you need to forget about the technology and concentrate on humans if you want to understand gaming. It’s in our nature to get involved, understand the rules and master the system, create things (and for some of us, blow them up), win and lose, relax and tally up — and even gloat about our scores — and to spin entire universes out of nothing more than our thoughts.
It’s hardly surprising that the pandemic’s tensions drew more individuals into gaming. In 2020, 34% of respondents to a poll by the professional services firm Deloitte attempted a new video game pastime. These activities include taking part in e-sports, playing a new game, subscribing to a gaming service, and watching others participate. And according to industry analysts, many of those individuals are likely to stay involved.
We think interactivity is cool
Do you want to be an action hero, a commercial pilot, or just a different version of yourself in a different setting? You are missing out on the most sophisticated kind of entertainment if you still consider video games to be childish, the equivalent of an electrical toy.
Yes, in the past, video games required players to remove all of the items off the screen while avoiding danger in order to achieve the highest score. But today, a lot of contemporary games produce immersive experiences with various objectives. Some unfold in a way that makes you the star of a movie. How the tale unfolds depends on the decisions you make. Still some games take an existential stance by offering settings where players construct, explore, and share more than they compete.
Let your creative side shine
“You may let your creative side shine through rather than your competitive side, according to McNealy. Consider the Civilization video game series launched by Sid Meier, a 67-year-old industry rock star whose name still appears on the box, introduced them in 1991. The player is responsible with governing a whole human civilization over the span of several millennia by directing several sectors like urban growth, exploration, administration, trade, science, and warfare, according to the Wikipedia description of Civilization.
Meier said, “We always thought we had something great, that we were doing something remarkable that let the athletes write their own narrative and be their own stars. We didn’t have as excellent visuals as movies. Our audio quality lagged behind recordings but we had something unique. We were aware that interaction was fun.”
The Sims and the SimCity franchise are another. Although a game about city planning and the lives of artificial people may not sound like a good time, both have long held the attention of players. Players controlled zoning, infrastructure, and city finances in SimCity, which was launched in 1989. Game also has mods to make the interection more exciting, to gain more insite about mods visit BakkesMod.org. Sims was oddly engrossing game and gave rise to a flurry of simulation games. Designer Will Wright, 61 discussed that SimCity was a spin-off of an earlier game he created called Raid on Bungeling Bay, which he describes as being “fire on and blow everything up.” He had to design a world to blow up, so he made a tool for hymself to do it. In doing so, he discovered that building the world was far more satisfying.
Music that changes the game
Consider this: In 1995, people questioned if computer games would ever achieve the level of visual quality shown in Pixar’s Toy Story. Today, visual effects are created for series like HBO’s Westworld and Disney+’s The Mandalorian using the Unreal Engine software from Epic Games, which powers games like Fortnite and Gears of War 5. Hollywood’s impact on video games extends in the opposite direction as well; many games, particularly the more cinematic ones, hire actors to give voice work or even “act” in them using motion capture technology.
Music has advanced significantly. Simple 8-bit tunes, like the well-known Mario Bros theme, have made way for intricate orchestral compositions. As a result, orchestras that featured music from video game toured the nation. These have been featured on PBS over the past 20 years and have been a part of the live performance scene.
Tommy Tallarico, 53, a video game music composer who has worked on more than 300 games and is currently in charge of reviving the Intellivision video game brand, argues that if Beethoven were living today, he would be a video game composer. His main objective was to manipulate people’s emotions. What greater outlet than today’s video games would that have been? Do you believe Beethoven would have composed for movies? Do you believe he would have approved of people conversing during two hours of his music?