Everyone is trying to get us to come out — or stay in — and
play. Seriously. Peloton, Netflix, Zoom, TikTok, Amazon, Apple and Google are
all either experimenting or going much bigger into video games.
اضافة اعلان
What is going on?
The straightforward answer is that globally people already spend
a lot of time and money on video games, and established game companies and
newcomers alike are eyeing all sorts of interactive digital experiments to grab
more of our time and money.
I am excited for this development, even though my own avid video
game playing ended in the era of BrickBreaker for the Blackberry. It feels as
if we are in the middle of re-imagining both what a “video game” is and what
online idle time can be — more engaging and social, perhaps, and a little less
passive doomscrolling. (Or I might be reading too much into this. Yeah, it
might just be about money.)
Whatever the motivation, games may soon feel inescapable. New
features on Zoom — yup, that Zoom — include poker, trivia and mystery games.
Peloton, the maker of $2,500 exercise bicycles, is releasing a game that allows
people’s pedal power to command a rolling virtual wheel. Netflix this week
confirmed that it planned to add video games to its online entertainment
service.
Facebook,
TikTok,
Amazon, Apple and Google to varying degrees are
pitching us video games or selling game subscriptions. (The New York Times is
going bigger into digital games and puzzles, too.)
Video games are a big business that grew even bigger during the
coronavirus pandemic, so it is not surprising that more companies want a piece
of the action. A recent report from Accenture estimated that global sales
related to games are higher than the combined revenues from movies and music.
Those figures include sales of conventional video games for computers and
consoles, smartphone games, advertising in games and more. Video games also
have cultural relevance, as the Olympic organizers showed this week by
featuring game music in the opening ceremony.
We may actually need to change our terminology because many new
digital games are different from how we might traditionally define and imagine
video games — those cinematic worlds of PlayStation or Xbox.
Just as smartphones introduced us to simpler games that
capitalized on unique features of phones like gyroscopes and on-the-go internet
connections, many newer games blur the lines between video games and other
types of social activities. Pokémon Go, Fortnite and Among Us are video games,
but they are also hangouts for friends, pop culture moments, opportunities for
political organizing and more.
What is thrilling about many of the newer game experiments is
that they signal a move beyond a phase in which online and smartphone media
often mirrored what came before; many podcasts were like talk radio, Netflix
was like TV and online news outlets were like newspapers.
I know that games are not all stimulating paragons of human
social connection, but it feels as if something exciting is happening. There is
more mushing together to arrive at new digital forms that emphasize interaction
rather than passive reading, watching or listening.
We are going to get more sophisticated games on the bleeding
edge of technology and more stuff that does not fit the video game box to
challenge our minds, bodies and social interactions. I am intrigued to see it
all.
Read more
Lifestyle
.jpg)
.jpg)
