Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Over three billion people worldwide now play video games, study reports

nintendosmash.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 378 posts

Re: Over three billion people worldwide now play video games, study reports

#51

Post by defterGoose »

HenryKissinger wrote: post #46
bitxbit wrote: post #36

This is a trend that will continue to accelerate. And I think we grossly underestimated how much time and money people are willing to spend on video games. Although, I think production has somewhat plateau’d in the past five years. There’s VR, but I believe there will be a new category introduced within the next five years that will change the gaming landscape.

I'm more skeptical. VR will remain a niche, and future games will feature improved graphics. The new haptic feedback on the PS5 controller will add a minor feature. Other than that, games will remain the same on the fundamentals. Couch co-op may make a comeback.

> Couch co-op may make a comeback.

This. Local multiplayer has been severely lacking from games since networking got really fast. Most people of my generation who grew up playing things like GoldenEye and Halo locally would buy anything that gave even minimal service to this niche.

My buddy and I stayed up til 2am the other week co-opping "Wild Guns" on his Super NT. Totally out of left field and something I never would have cared for when I had an SNES.

Re: Over three billion people worldwide now play video games, study reports

#52

Post by klyrs »

My great grandmother used to play solitaire. The same way that many of us while away the night staring at a screen, she'd sit in her apartment wearing the spots off a pack of cards. Some oldsters will react to this news with dismay, but as I see it, our lives are richer for the innovation.

Re: Over three billion people worldwide now play video games, study reports

#53

Post by ashtonkem »

harimau777 wrote: post #11
superhuzza wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't you count Candy Crush? It seems like it would fall under any reasonable definition of video game.

I'd argue that ultra-casual games like Candy Crush have so little in common with "core games" that it's not particularly useful to consider them the same thing. A similar situation: If I was discussing "board game culture" I think that most people would recognize that I'm referring the culture associated with games like Catan or Pandemic as opposed to people casually playing Tic Tac Toe.

I really dislike any attempt to draw a distinction between “casual” (a dismissive term) games from “core” games. This is pure gate keeping behavior; an attempt to diminish some games (and therefore their players) as being less real than others.

If you wish to separate “core” gamers, do it by device or by category, since that is much clearer and carries less of a value judgement.

Re: Over three billion people worldwide now play video games, study reports

#54

Post by ashtonkem »

harimau777 wrote: post #44
rsynnott wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I was discussing "board game culture" No-one's talking about 'board game culture', though. This is about whether people play video games. If you were talking about the board games people play, Catan would be a barely visible blip; it'd be all about things like Monopoly. Now if you were talking about people who consider playing games part of their identity, I'd be inclined to agree (though there are edge cases; P…

My point is that "people who play video games" doesn't mean much if you define it so broadly that it includes both people who play primarily core games and people who play exclusively casual games. From a business perspective, they are unlikely to be the same target market. Gaming related memes and similar cultural artifacts are unlikely to be shared. Etc.

What makes a video game “core” other than your value judgement?

Re: Over three billion people worldwide now play video games, study reports

#56

Post by WoahNoun »

klyrs wrote: post #52

My great grandmother used to play solitaire. The same way that many of us while away the night staring at a screen, she'd sit in her apartment wearing the spots off a pack of cards. Some oldsters will react to this news with dismay, but as I see it, our lives are richer for the innovation.

What's amazing is that solitaire isn't a single game with a set rules. It's an entire category of card games. The "game developers" of the past were just people agreeing on a set of rules.

Re: Over three billion people worldwide now play video games, study reports

#57

Post by codingdave »

klyrs wrote: post #52

My great grandmother used to play solitaire. The same way that many of us while away the night staring at a screen, she'd sit in her apartment wearing the spots off a pack of cards. Some oldsters will react to this news with dismay, but as I see it, our lives are richer for the innovation.

I still do play solitaire. I taught a few variations to my kids early on when the pandemic locked us at home. I don't judge either style of game as better or worse than the other... just different. Video games are clearly richer games, but the conversations I had with my family growing up were often while sitting around a table playing card games.

Re: Over three billion people worldwide now play video games, study reports

#59

Post by reificator »

codingdave wrote: post #57
klyrs wrote: post #52

My great grandmother used to play solitaire. The same way that many of us while away the night staring at a screen, she'd sit in her apartment wearing the spots off a pack of cards. Some oldsters will react to this news with dismay, but as I see it, our lives are richer for the innovation.

I still do play solitaire. I taught a few variations to my kids early on when the pandemic locked us at home. I don't judge either style of game as better or worse than the other... just different. Video games are clearly richer games, but the conversations I had with my family growing up were often while sitting around a table playing card games.

> Video games are clearly richer games

I don't know, if you include Magic the Gathering in the card games pile it's definitely competitive on the "richness"[0] spectrum against most video games.

Though in the current apocalypse, there's been an uptick in video game forms of Magic, and even a sharp rise in people playing over the internet by pointing a webcam at their table.

[0]: Pun not intended, but it's undeniably also expensive...

Re: Over three billion people worldwide now play video games, study reports

#60

Post by reificator »

HenryKissinger wrote: post #40
choward wrote: post #38

> However, only about 250 million people are active console users who regularly buy new games for them. Although they represent only 8% of the total number of gamers, this is the group with the highest revenue per person. Why is there an "although" at the beginning of that sentence? Why wouldn't they be generating the highest revenue person?

PCs are more expensive than consoles, so one might be led to think that PC gamers have more money than console gamers and thus spend more on games than their console brethrens.

PCs are definitely not more expensive than consoles when you compare the TCO over a year or two, and that gulf keeps getting wider the longer you're on PC.

This was true even before Steam sales and Humble Bundle and free games on the Epic Store and and and...

Post reply on HN