Video Games Aren’t Just For Kids And Here’s Why
“Why are you wasting your life on video games?”
“Act your age!”
“You’re too old for this.”
“Na man, I grew up a long time ago.”
If I had a dollar for every time I heard any of these statements or questions, I wouldn’t need a well established savings system to acquire all the gaming titles on my wish list.
But sadly, that’s not gonna happen for a while. Hopefully I’m might chance upon a windfall of sorts sometime to appease my immersive forms of entertainment. Until then, I’m going to tell you why video games are anything but strictly for children — a popular misconception and opinion that has somehow found its way through & infected the rather skeptic.
What started off as academic research in the 1950s is now a $108 billion dollar industry in 2017.
Evolution
Gaming has come a long, long way right from the early arcades to the Gen-Z Virtual Reality devices finding a place in every relatively affluent household. Today, an increasing number of people are purchasing Playstations and Xboxes (I’m not sure if that’s a word but I’m gonna put it there anyway).
If you take a look at the 90s and 2000s which saw a huge spike in the number of TV Systems, Handhelds, Personal Computers and Laptops dedicated to gaming, it was clearly a sign of a vastly growing industry.
If kids are the consumers and if not all parents are inclined towards spoiling their kids with their every whim, who’s really buying these titles to pump in all that money?
Budgets for Video Game development are currently averaging well over $10 million with the AAA games (Games that require A lot of time, A lot of resources, A lot of money) barely touching triple digit millions.
Grand Theft Auto 5, a recent sequel to a controversial blockbuster franchise developed by gaming behemoth Rockstar Games chalked up $137 million dollars to produce the game.
The production cost of the movie 300 was $65 million dollars.
They’re pooling in more money than for movies now for your gaming pleasure.
Who’s playing?
Today, the average age group that’s purchasing a console by either Sony or Microsoft is, surprise surprise, 28 years old.
TWENTY EIGHT YEARS OLD. People that age are already married and/or having kids shitting in their diapers. These are people with disposable income and out of their parents’ jurisdiction on how to spend their time and money.
But these are also people who have the highest stress levels owing to being at the start of their career and at the end of the day, you just want to come home, unwind, forget the foul mood your boss probably put you in and shoot some zombies or escape into an intriguing story that has plots deeper than most TV shows today. Gaming is your friend and stress-buster.
Recreating intense moments in history, envisioning survival through a zombie apocalypse, simulations of World War Battles, Survival gore games that make you piss your pants in Virtual Reality — all with R ratings for mature players of 18 years and above clearly showcase their intended mature audience.
It’s Literally A Sport Now
eSports has become a major competitive event with prize pools going well into the million mark.
The International is an annual worldwide competitive eSport tailing the game Dota 2: a strategy based multiplayer tower defence game that has taken the world by storm. 2017’s event saw a reported prize pool of $24 million dollars. The base prize pool from Sponsors was about $1.6 million dollars. The rest was contributed by gamers all over the world! We’re talking $23 million dollars here. It’s a fuckin’ global phenomenon and not just a humble community anymore.
Just take a look at the stage built for The International below. The stage itself is a screen at their feet which details projections of the game for the audience when major plays between competitors are being executed.
Professional gaming is a booming career choice with the world’s highest paid gamer being Saahil Arora aka UNiVeRsE with a reported earnings of $3 million dollars this year.
Gaming is now part of the Olympics 2024 with eSports up for consideration.
Videos Games To Major Motion Pictures
While the trend hasn’t always been favorable to the fans, producers are time and again trying to recreate epic plot lines from games only to see the movie fail before the masses.
We’ve seen attempts such as Assasin’s Creed, The Angry Birds Movie, Warcraft, Doom, Resident Evil and the like do severe injustice to the franchises through story changes, hackneyed dialogues, ambitious visuals and actors who simply can’t step into the right shoes.
The Last Of Us — A game developed by Naughty Dog studios in association with Sony has one of the greatest narratives ever told. The plot was so immersive, I felt the need to keep this permanent with me and had an element from the game tattooed on the back of my neck.
While not an officially proven or claimed, 2017’s Hugh Jackman starer Logan had all the elements of the game including the plot-line and there are enough theories on the internet to show the thin lines that separate the plots of the movies. Below is one of the stills from the movie and the game, extremely close.
Uncharted, another Naughty Dog success, is reported to be in the works for a major action-adventure Hollywood production starring Tom Holland.
R rated games being turned into R rated movie productions. Not exactly for kids I’d say.
To Summarise
Don’t ever let someone tell you you’re too old for gaming.
It’s a lot like reading a book. (Yes, I went there guys.)
Escape here & now, be someone else for that fair amount of time, do things you can’t do in the real world, immerse yourself in convoluted narratives, explore fascinating new worlds, get creative and simply de-stress.
See you with the fuckin’ other controller.
