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The advent of gaming, especially computer gaming, marks a fundamental break in human affairs. Gaming is profoundly transforming two central aspects of the modern world: culture and regulation. There will be no turning back.
When it comes to culture, the West has been in a dialogue with itself for centuries, indeed millennia, stretching at least as far back as the Bible and the ancient Greeks. Literature, music, cinema and the visual arts provide a common body of knowledge that intellectual elites are expected to be conversant with. Knowing one part of that canon usually helps you master the other parts; Verdi drew upon Shakespeare, who influenced Orson Welles, and so on. Culture has never been about self-contained worlds. Quite the contrary.
Games break that continuity. Typically a game is a closed system that requires a lot of time and attention to achieve mastery, thereby encouraging specialized consumption. It is easy to become a world-class performer in a game without knowing much about the broader culture. By the same token, most of today’s cultural experts know very little about gaming, and they get on just fine. The worlds of culture and gaming are largely separate.
This is not a criticism of gaming, which has enriched many millions of lives. It is simply to note that the mix of digitisation and immersion — combined with the closed, world-building, proprietary structure of the gaming enterprise — has created something new. Games very often use interesting music and visual effects, and in this sense they are cultural objects. But the fundamental appeal of gaming has more to do with performance and focus. Gaming is more like participating in an event than watching an event.
And make no mistake about it: As an avocation, gaming is winning out. The gaming sector produces about $179 billion in worldwide revenue, larger than that for global movies and North American sports combined. Gaming increased during the pandemic and has emerged robust. Other cultural products, so to speak, seem to be on the wane. Are there many books today that get the attention and discussion that, say, the Harry Potter series did at the turn of the century?
—Bloomberg